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JOE HALDEMAN 

author of The Forever War 



“>^^’re looking for people 
to write children’s books” 


By Alvin Tressclt, Dean of Faculty 


I F you want to write 
and get published, I 
cant think of a better 
way to do it than writing 
for children and teenagers. 

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other checks from other 
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Alvin Trcsselt was Editor of Parents’ Magazine 
Press, Humpty Dumpty’s Magazine, and a board 
member of the Author’s Guild, ills $3 books for 
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• Testimonials were provided voluntarily, without 
remuneration by Institute students, FJ85-1989. 


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writes Brandy S. Wells, Greensboro, MD, "is the 
idea that my story will be read by 150.000 Sunday 
school children — my dream come true.’’ 

Free Writing Aptitude Test offered 
To find qualified men and women with an aptitude 
for writing, the Institute of Children's Literature 
offers an intriguing Aptitude Test. It is free and will 
be evaluated at no cost to you. 

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Writing 


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Institute of Children’s Literature 
Redding Ridge, Connecticut 06876 
Yes, I’m interested in your program to help 
new writers get started. Please send me your 
free Writing Aptitude Test and 28-page bro- 
chure. I understand I am under no obliga- 
tion whatever and no salesman will visit me. 
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INSTITUTE OF CHILDREN'S LITERATURE. INC. 1989 





The brilliant new sf adventure from the 
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A NOVEL BY 

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Wan-To was the oldest and most powerful intelligence in 
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Post 





A ISA/kC _ 

Asiaaov 

SCIENCE FICTION* 

MAGAZINE 


Vol. 14 No. 6 (Whole number157) 

June 1990 
Next issue on sale 
May 29,1990 

Novella 

118 Mr. Boy James Patrick Kelly 

Novelettes 

18 Madness Has Its Place Larry Niven 

70 Limekiller at Large Avram Davidson 

Short Stories 

50 For a Price 

64 White City 

89 The Blue Love Potion 
1 04 Projects 

Departments 

4 Editorial: English Isaac Asimov 

0 L0tt©rs 

1 6 Neat Stuff Matthew J. Costello 

175 On Books: All’s Well 

That Ends Well Norman Spinrad 

192 The SF Conventional Calendar— Erwin S. Strauss 

Cover art for “Mr. Boy" by A.C. Farley 


—Mary Rosenblum 

Lewis Shiner 

Lisa Goldstein 

Geoffrey A. Landis 


Isaac Asimov: Editorial Director Gardner Dozois: Editor 

Sheila Williams: Managing Editor 

Joel Davis: President & Publisher Terri Czeczko: Art Director 


Published every 28 days with special issues in April and November by Davis Pub- 
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EDITORIAL 



by Isaac Asimov 


ENGLISH 

I am in love with the English 
language. Though I consider my- 
self a global creature who would 
like to do away with narrow-minded 
nationalisms, I cannot rid myself 
of the notion that the English lan- 
guage is simply better than all oth- 
ers. 

This is not because I happen to 
be able to speak and understand 
English because, actually. I’m not 
very good at the language. This 
may strike you as unbelievable, 
but it is true. 

You see, I was brought up in a 
bilingual society. The adults about 
me spoke both Yiddish and English 
and spoke Yiddish much better 
than they spoke English. As a re- 
sult, I was bilingual, too, and I’m 
still bilingual, though I speak Eng- 
lish much better than I speak Yid- 
dish. 

Everyone who meets me is aware 
that I speak English with a “Brook- 
lyn accent,” but it is also true that 
I write with a Brooklyn accent. 
How is that possible? Well, Yiddish 
is, essentially, a dialect of medieval 
German, and it makes use of Ger- 
man word order. 

Thus, in English we would say, 
“He had not gotten any good out of 


his reading.” In German, however, 
we are apt to say the equivalent of 
“Out of his reading, had he nol any 
good gotten.” Well, into my writ- 
ing, this sort of word order, quite 
against my will, sometimes creeps 
(see what I mean) and I keep copy- 
editors busy unwinding my prose. 
Also, who knows anything about 
the finer points of punctuation, and 
assorted grammatical subtleties? 
Not I! I never went beyond Fresh- 
man English. I’m a chemist. 

However, just as I am bilingual, 
so is English. English was origi- 
nally a strictly Teutonic language. 
Then in the eleventh century in 
came the Normans, who spoke a 
French dialect. Eventually, the two 
languages melted together and 
modem English is, as a result, a 
double language. A surprising 
number of words exist in both Teu- 
tonic and Latinate terms. 

Thus we can either “answer” in 
Teutonic, or “respond” in Latinate. 
Something is either “hot” or “tor- 
rid.” It is either “cold” or “frigid.” 
Something can be done “daily” or 
it can be “diurnal”; it can be 
“nightly” or it can be “nocturnal.” 
You can be “lovable” or “amiable.” 
And so on, and so on. 


4 


This double language of English 
gives it a flexibility that German 
(which is entirely Teutonic) or 
French (which is entirely Latinate) 
doesn’t have. After all, the two 
words, one Teutonic and one Latin- 
ate, usually have different shades 
of meaning. “Lovable” and “amia- 
ble” are not precise synonyms. 

This, in turn, means that you can 
speak Latinate English when you 
want to achieve certain effects and 
Teutonic English when you want 
to achieve other effects. Teutonic 
English tends to consist of short, 
strong words, that are clear and 
sharp. 

“And God said. Let there be 
light, and there was light.” 

Every word is one-syllable. Every 
word is Teutonic. Every word is 
unmistakable. What if the line had 
been translated: “Consequently, 
Deity announced. Allow illumina- 
tion — ensued illumination.” Every 
word Latinate, and ornate. The 
meaning is roughly there, but to 
translate the line in this way would 
be blasphemous. (Of course, it is 
hard to make a sentence entirely 
Latinate, because some of the com- 
monest English words, such as 
“the” and “there” and “and” are so 
simple and so common that no La- 
tinate equivalents have been al- 
lowed.) 

Of course, the Latinate version 
of English has its virtues, too. The 
words are elaborate, and tend to be 
multisyllabic. They don’t ring 
sharply, but reverberate. They 
abandon the absolute clarity of 


ISAAC ASIMOV: 

Editorial Director 

GARDNER DOZOIS: 

Editor 

SHEILA WILLIAMS: 

Monoging Editor 

IAN RANDAL STROCK: 

Assistant Editor 

TERRI CZECZKO: 

Art Director 

ANTHONY BARI: 

Junior Designer 

CAROLE DIXON: 

Production Director 

CYNTHIA MANSON: 

Director of Marketing and Subsidiary Rights 

FLORENCE B. EICHIN: 

Permissions & Controcts Monoger 

VEENA RA6HAVAN 

Director. Special Projects 

CHRISTIAN DORBANDT: 

Newsstond Marketing and ProrTKition 

DENNIS JONES: 

Nesvsstond Operotior^s Manager 

ELIZABETH BEATTY 

Circulation Director 

BRIAN McKEON: 

Corporate Business Moroger 

A. BRUCE CHATTERTON 

Advertisirrg Director 

LISA FEERICK: 

Advertisirvg Coordinotor 

IRENE BOZOKI: 

Clossified Advertising Moroger 


ADVERTISING OFFICES 
NEW YORK 

(212) 557-9100 

JOEL DAVIS 

Presideni and Pubitshef 


CARL BARTEE 

Vice President 
Monufocturing 


JOE DEFALCO 

Vice President 
Fironce 

Please do not send us your manu- 
script until you've gotten a copy of our 
manuscript guidelines. To obtain this, 
send us a self-addressed, stamped 
business-size envelope (what station- 
ery stores call a numbertO envelope), 
and a note requesting this informa- 
jion. Please write "manuscript guide- 
lines" on the bottom left-hand comer 
of the outside envelope. The address 
for this and for all editorial corre- 
spondence is lAsfm, Davis Publica- 
tions, Inc. 380 Lexington Avenue, NY, 
NY 10017. While we're always looking 
for new writers, please, in the interest 
of time-saving, find out what we're 
looking for, and how to prepare it, 
before submitting your story. 


EDITORIAL: ENGLISH 


5 



meaning for the subtle content of 
nuance. 

Thus, to take my favorite ex- 
ample, let us turn to the tragedy 
of Macbeth and use a passage I’ve 
already used in my editorial “Met- 
aphor” half a year ago. Macbeth 
has just killed Duncan and is hav- 
ing a fit of horrors over it. His 
hands are bloody, and he sees them 
as bloody literally and figura- 
tively. The literal blood can be 
washed off, but the figurative 
blood — ^the blood symbolizing the 
murder of a guest and a king — can- 
not. 

He says, thinking of the figura- 
tive blood: “Will all great Nep- 
tune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean 
from my hand? No, this my hand 
will rather.” And now just listen to 
this next line: 

“The multitudinous seas incar- 
nadine.” “Multitudinous” is Latin- 
ate and means, very roughly, the 
Teutonic “great.” But consider 
“multitudinous.” It is five syllables 
long and can’t be said quickly (or 
shouldn’t be said quickly). The 
“m,” “1,” the “n,” and the “s” can 
be lingered over and the actor’s 
voice, rising and falling, as it pours 
out those syllables gets into it the 
feeling of something that is far 
more than “great.” It is enormous. 
If you say “great” you get the 
meaning, after a fashion, but you 
lose the poetry. 

And how about “incarnadine.” 
It’s a Latinate word meaning, 
roughly, “to dye red.” But it means 
much more than that in the context 
of this speech. “Incarnadine” con- 


tains the Latin word for “meat” so 
it means “to dye the color of meat”, 
presumably fresh meat dripping 
with blood. “Incarnadine” is not 
just to color something red, but to 
change it to the color of blood. 

So what Shakespeare is saying 
in his Latinate fashion is that Mac- 
beth’s hand would turn all the vast 
and enormous ocean into blood. 
And then, feeling, perhaps, that 
the less well-educated portion of 
the audience would not get the im- 
age, in the very next line, he trans- 
lates the earlier line from Latinate 
English to Teutonic English say- 
ing, “Making the green one red.” 

This would be less powerful, al- 
most laughable, if it stood by itself, 
but coming immediately after the 
terrific Latinate of the previous 
line, it reinforces the image to an 
almost unbearable intensity, 
((jroodness! How I wish I could write 
like that. I know all the words. I 
just can’t put them together the 
way he did.) 

Anyway, the fact that English is 
a fusion of two languages and has, 
at every point, alternate ways of 
saying the same thing, has had an 
enormously important result. Both 
German and French are used to the 
notion that there is only one way 
to say something and that there is, 
for that reason, only one right way 
to say anything and any deviation 
is wrong. 

English, however, with no one 
right way, never got it through its 
head that there was anything wrong 
with adopting still other ways of 
saying something. Therefore, it 


6 


ISAAC ASIMOV 





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freely borrowed words from every 
language under the sun and made 
them its own. Virtually all of sci- 
entific terminology is Greek and 
Latin — even of quite common ob- 
jects. For instance, the “telephone” 
is called that from Greek words 
meaning “to speak at a distance.” 
We don’t have to know what the 
Greek means, however. The word 
“telephone” is good enough. It 
sounds Latinate and that makes it 
English. 

In German, however, something 
that is Latinate is alien. The tele- 
phone is therefore the “Fern- 
sprecher,” which, in German, means 
“to speak at a distance.” We would 
get the same feeling if we insisted 
on calling a telephone a “far- 
speaker.” In fact, that is the exact 
version in Teutonic English of 
“Fernsprecher.” 

Of course, you may remember 
that in the great song in My Fair 
Lady in which Henry Higgins won- 
ders why the English don’t teach 
their children how to speak, he 
muses that the French don’t really 
care what they do as long as they 
pronounce it correctly. 

Well, it seems to me that in Eng- 
lish it doesn’t matter where a word 
comes from as long as it is mis- 
pronounced correctly. The French 
“chauffeur” (sho-FEUR) for some- 
one who drives a car, becomes 
“chauffeur” (SHO-fer) and that 
makes it English. In the same way, 
“garage” (gah-RAHZH) which is 


French for a building housing a 
car, becomes “garage” (gah-RAHJ) 
in American and, I think, “garage” 
(GAR-ij) in British. 

On one of my rare trips to Great 
Britain I was offered a “GAT-o” for 
dessert. I registered a blank. 
“What’s a GAT-o?” I asked. He 
showed it to me. It was a cake and 
I realized he was saying the French 
“gateau” (ga-TOE) in English. 

My dear wife, Janet, was once 
troubled by hearing the blood rush 
through her carotid artery when 
she inserted her ear-plugs (she has 
an extraordinarily intense sense of 
hearing) and for a while we spoke 
frequently of the “BROO-ee” that 
she heard. 

Someone said to me on hearing 
this mentioned, “Where do they get 
that word ‘BROO-ee’?” 

I said, “It just means ‘noise.’ It’s 
from the French ‘bruit.’ ” 

My questioner, a very well-edu- 
cated woman, was highly incensed 
at the mispronunciation. After all, 
the French pronounce it “BRWEE,” 
in one syllable, something only a 
Gallic throat can do properly. 

But, anyway, all this borrowing 
has given English a vocabulary 
that is far larger than that of any 
other language and one that is far 
more subtle. English has more syn- 
onyms with more shades of mean- 
ing than any other language and 
it is the most elaborate vocal tool 
ever invented, and as I said at the 
start — I love it. 0 






Dear Dr. Asimov; 

I was calmly reading the October 
1989 issue when I was brought to 
a grinding halt by the following 
passage in Alexander Jablokov’s A 
Deeper Sea: 

“Thera . . . the great volcano 
whose eruption had brought 
an end to Cretan civilization.” 
Say what, Mr. Jablokov? Classical 
archeologists have known for gen- 
erations that Minoan (pre-Hellenic 
Cretan) civilization was brought to 
its end by invasion, probably from 
the mainland. The only modern 
scholar to adhere to the volcanic- 
cataclysm theory was Spiros Mar- 
inatis, who died in 1974. Since 
then, scientific testing by a variety 
of methods has confirmed what ar- 
cheologists had been saying all 
along: the eruption of Thera oc- 
curred fifty to a hundred years be- 
fore the abrupt end of Minoan 
palace civilization, and cannot pos- 
sibly have been its cause. 

Now, where do you get this stuff 
about classicists not being “prac- 
tical”? 

Sincerely yours, 

Louise Hope 
undergraduate student 
(of Classics, what else?) 

My dear, in history a cause is not 
followed immediately by an effect. 
There is such a thing as inertia. The 


eruption of Thera fatally weakened 
Crete. However, it also did damage 
to the Greek coastline so that the 
Myceneans could not take imme- 
diate advantage of Cretan weak- 
ness. However, in fifty to a hundred 
years, the Myceneans managed to 
do what they would never have done 
without Thera’s eruption. 

—Isaac Asimov 


Dear Dr. Asimov and Gardner Do- 
zois: 

Thank you very much for your 
September 1989 issue of your mag- 
azine. I have been an avid reader 
of Asimov’s for several years, but 
I have never gotten around to writ- 
ing you until now (I generally 
spend too much time reading to 
bother with correspondence). But 
two stories in this particular issue 
moved me like nothing you’ve pub- 
lished before, and I felt honorbound 
to congratulate you on your superb 
taste. 

“Dori Bangs” by Bruce Sterling 
is one of the most moving and 
tragic tales I’ve ever had the pleas- 
ure of reading. While it’s not ex- 
actly science fiction or even an 
outright fantasy, it IS a poignant 
examination of what might have 
been if this pair of star-crossed lov- 
ers had ever met. For the first time 
in many a year I was moved to 


9 



tears by a story, and when I finish 
this letter I am going to make a 
run to the nearest bookstore and 
search out every one of Sterling’s 
titles. 

Another prime example of the 
superior quality of your publica- 
tion’s fiction is Allen M. Steele’s 
“Red Planet Blues.” It explores 
some of my favorite topics in sci- 
ence fiction: the possible explora- 
tion of Mars and what might be 
discovered there, the senseless ri- 
valry brought about by the Cold 
War, and the certainty that we will 
one day bring the art of warfare 
into space. The ending was a pleas- 
ant surprise, and left me crying for 
“More!” 

The rest of the contents were 
equally admirable, and I would 
like to thank you once again for 
another fantastic issue of Asimov’s. 

Keep up the good work, Mr. Do- 
zois! 

Sincerely yours, 

J.J. Stambaugh 
Knoxville, TN 

Thank you. In rating science fic- 
tion magazines, as in everything 
else, it is easier to write a letter of 
complaint than one of praise. 
Therefore, if 10 percent of the read- 
ership is annoyed, over 50 percent 
of the letters we get express that an- 
noyance. (No, I haven’t carried out 
a survey; I’m guessing from what 
knowledge I have gleaned of human 
nature.) Anyway, it’s nice to get an 
occasional letter like yours. 

— Isaac Asimov 

Dr. Asimov, 

I read with great interest your 
Editorial in the October issue of 

10 


lAsfm. The history of the assassins 
of the Middle East was indeed en- 
lightening, as the windows of our 
past have always been fascinating 
to me. It appeared to me, though, 
as the Editorial was winding down, 
that you suffered from a bit of con- 
tradiction. Your article first pointed 
toward offensive books and your 
willingness to even march against 
such writings. But a couple of par- 
agraphs later, you denounced a 
Cardinal of the Roman Catholic 
Church for “recommending” to his 
flock not to read a certain book as 
it offended a different religion. 

May I ask, what difference is the 
willingness to protest a book on the 
one hand and a recommendation 
against reading it on the other? In 
my opinion, a recommendation not 
to read a book is in the same arena 
as listening to a TV movie critic 
telling you not to waste your bucks 
on a dud of a movie. It is not cen- 
sorship; hut an opinion. Now, if the 
Cardinal came out and stated that 
all parishioners who read this book 
faced excommunication — that 
would he censorship, just as your 
willingness to march against what 
you feel offensive is. 

I do agree, though, that censor- 
ship is a delicate item. It is one that 
should be kept away from those 
who would rather do our thinking 
for us and be locked up where cen- 
sorship belongs — in the heart of 
each individual. 

Thanks, 

Rex H. Wyers 

Key West, FL 

My friend, there is a difference. 
If I were to denounce a book, I would 
do so only in my own person. There’s 
not a man or woman in the world 


LETTERS 




Were they 
the chosen people 
or human pawns in 
an inter-dimensional 
struggle between 
alien powers? *' 

When the Galactic Magistrate 
aliens with incredible destruci 
capability— forced world after 
world to join their Union 
Solar Systems, only the 
Gamant people fought 
to maintain their indi- 
viduality. For they 
were the Chosen 
ones, blessed with 
the gift of an inter- 
dimensional gateway to 
God. But were the beings of 
light they communed with actually 
angels? Or were they aliens using the Gamants 
and the Galactic Magistrates for their 
own deadly purposes? 





S4.95 


DAW BOOKS, INC. 

Distributed by NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY 



who would accept my opinion as 
representing anything but my opin- 
ion. When a Prince of the Church 
does the same thing, he is speaking 
from an awesome spiritual height, 
and millions can’t help but think 
that his voice is the voice of God. 
Please tell me that you see the dif- 
ference. 

— Isaac Asimov 


Dear Dr. Asimov, 

As a history buff, I have long en- 
joyed your stories about what I like 
to think of as the History of the 
Future. It is therefore with ex- 
treme trepidation that I undertake 
to correct one of such broad and 
deep erudition as yourself. I no- 
ticed, however, a small historical 
error in your editorial in the Oc- 
tober issue of lAsfm. The wedding 
in 336 B.c. at which Philip of Ma- 
cedon was assassinated was not his 
own. His death occurred at the 
games held in celebration of the 
wedding of his daughter, Kleopa- 
tra, to her uncle, Philip’s brother- 
in-law, Alexandres, King of Epi- 
rus. The actual wedding ceremony 
had taken place the previous day. 

Philip’s wedding to Eurydice, a 
girl from a noble Macedonian fam- 
ily, took place more than a year 
earlier, in 337 b.c. It was at this 
celebration that a drunken brawl 
erupted in which Alexander drew 
a sword on Philip, after which he 
and his mother Olympias were 
forced to flee. Alexander returned 
shortly thereafter and he had been 
reinstated into his father’s good 
graces by the time of Philip’s death. 
At no time was Alexander officially 
disinherited, and he was at Philip’s 
side when he was killed. One of 


Philip’s own bodyguards was the 
assassin, stabbing him with a short 
Celtic dagger. Unfortunately, he 
was killed by overzealous pursuers 
before he could be questioned as to 
the identity of the conspirators. 

Thank you for your kind atten- 
tion. 

Sincerely, 

M. Eileen Eisemann 
Deer Park, NY 

Thank you. I accept the correc- 
tion. A rather erudite book of mine, 
just out, was reviewed by someone 
who referred to me as "The Man 
Who Knows Too Much.” I think it’s 
important for people to understand 
that I don’t. (The reviewer, by the 
way, wrote anonymously, so I have 
no hesitation in labeling him as 
"The Critic who is a Coward Too 
Much.”) 

— Isaac Asimov 


Dear Dr. Asimov: 

I have been a subscriber of I As fm 
for a little over a year and I am 
thoroughly entertained by the SF 
on its pages every month. I often 
write science fiction literature but 
have encountered a problem: All 
the English teachers I have had in 
school encourage me not to write 
SF and even give me lower grades, 
regardless of the quality, when I 
do. I am also enrolled in a writing 
program whose instructor detests 
science fiction, and I am sure I will 
not get a chance to write SF in the 
program. I was also rejected from 
that particular writing program 
the previous year because the sto- 
ries I submitted in my portfolio 
were mainly science fiction. 

I would like to ask your advice 


12 


LEHERS 



on this matter, Dr. Asimov. Should 
I continue to write what I want to 
write, or should I do what my SF- 
hating teachers want me to do, and 
write normal fiction. Did you en- 
counter this same problem when 
you were in high school? I can un- 
derstand that I should be flexible 
in my writing, but I don’t think my 
teachers understand what true sci- 
ence fiction is, and are dissuading 
me from writing it because of their 
misconceptions about it. 

Jason Borenstein, age 15 
New Haven, CT 

I can’t advise you to get into trou- 
ble with your teachers, and I don’t 
advise you to do so. However, when 
I was in school, I was in constant 
hot water with the teachers because 
I insisted on doing things my way, 
and it worked. However, I didn’t 
ask anybody; I did it on my own. 

— Isaac Asimov 


Dear Dr. Asimov, 

I have just recently read your 
editorial, “Sage,” and have to ad- 
mit, finished it somewhat guiltily. 
I am one of those, now obviously 
one of many, who have sent in an 
innocent enough letter asking for 
gobs of personal insight and knowl- 
edge, mine specifically for infor- 
mation on Mr. Campbell for my 
high school term paper, which was 
quickly disregarded so that I could 
“write my own paper.” I, of course, 
was thrilled to get a response from 
you, realizing only later that it was 
a mildly accusatory letter pointing 
out laziness on my part. 

But now I get to the heart of my 
anecdote, for the irony of your 
words rang deeply and heartily. 



Five-time Nebula Award- 
winner Robert Silverberg 
now returns to the world of 
At Winter's End and to a 
stunning vision of rebirth and 
adventure ... of wondrous 
new heroes, revelations, 
and myths. 

“Silverberg is our best.’’ 

— Fantasy & Science Fiction 

A MAIN SELECTION OF THE 
SCIENCE FICTION BOOK CLUB 

A QUESTAR HARDCOVER 
O ViARNER BOOKS 

1990 Warner Books 


LEHERS 


This is because of a twist on my 
teacher’s assignment. As a stan- 
dard, a letter can be used for quotes 
and other such references. But in 
her class, receiving a letter from an 
author we were doing our paper on 
would land us an automatic “A.” 
She’d confidently told us, though, 
that that had never happened. 

It did not seem like such an over- 
whelming obstacle, so I chose a fa- 
vored and easily accessible author 
(yourself), and wrote a quick letter 
under the guise of asking for in- 
formation. (It was not really a de- 
ception, for I would have appre- 
ciated any information you had 
offered, regardless.) Upon receiv- 
ing your letter, I promptly showed 
it to my teacher. In shock, she 
grudgingly gave me an “A.” 

Don’t bemoan my lack of edu- 
cation, though. I wrote the paper 
anyway, waiting until the last 
minute because I had no worry 
about my grade. Staying up all 
night and through a showing of The 
Shining, I finished it and handed 
it in like everyone else. To my sur- 
prise, I would have gotten an “A” 
anyway. For only one of the two 
scores was I graded as a “B” (raised 
to an “A” because of your letter), 
and not low enough to pull the 
other grade down. So all that 
scheming for nothing. 

Actually, as my writing needed 
little help, I wish my teacher had 
had some provisions for the 
tests. . . . 

A loyal reader. 

Jay Michael 

Munster, IN 


I try to help and to answer when 
I can. I don’t approve of a blanket 


"A” just because you picked a good- 
natured victim, but perhaps your 
teacher has learned better. Despite 
my good nature, when a reader 
drives me past endurance and I 
snap at him ( or her) 1 sometimes get 
a letter accusing me of arrogance 
and of other high crimes. I got a 
letter like that today. 

— Isaac Asimov 



SPECIAL NOTICE 
TO READERS 


This year marks the beginning 
of a new deveiopment— the ad- 
dition of doubie issues to lAsfm’s 
scheduie. Currentiy, lAsfm is 
pubiished every four weeks, or 
thirteen times a year. 

Our November 1990 issue will 
be virtually double the size of a 
standard one, providing our 
readers with even more of the 
exciting editorial material you 
have come to expect from lAsfm. 
In 1991, both our fourteenth-an- 
niversary April issue and the No- 
vember issue will be doubled in 
size and, in subsequent years, 
the April and November issues 
will continue to be double ones. 


14 


LETTERS 



[STANLEYl^^ 


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by Matthew J. 
Costello 


NEAT STUFF 


A few weeks ago, Universal Pic- 
tures invited me to fly out to visit 
the set of William Friedkin’s new 
film, The Guardian, and watch the 
filming of the special effects-laden 
climax. It was an unusual offer be- 
cause directors are, at best, reluc- 
tant to have writers make even a 
quickie tour of active sets. And a 
film’s finale is usually the most 
tense time. 

Sad to say, I had to turn the in- 
triguing offer down. A week in Cal- 
ifornia didn’t fit in with my other 
plans, but it alerted me to the fact 
that something interesting might 
be going on with the production, 
and Friedkin — always an interest- 
ing director . . . 

The screenplay of the The 
Guardian is based on Dan Green- 
burg’s 1987 bestseller. The Nanny. 
And no, the novel doesn’t detail the 
plight of Hollywood stars who run 
off with their kid’s overly-attrac- 
tive au pair. The story is in the tra- 
dition of the gothic suspense tale. 
There’s a dark forest and a hideous 
tree that lives by taking young ba- 
bies into its fold. A young working 
couple — that cliche of modern 
times — hires a nanny who will 
fight them for their baby. 

All right ... at first blush the 
story doesn’t seem all that compel- 

16 


ling. But it does have that stream- 
lined feel of the fairy tale, of the 
struggle between good vs. evil. The 
tree, a demon god, harkens back to 
pagan nature worship, an interest- 
ing theme that hasn’t been done to 
death in the horror genre. 

And, with Friedkin directing, I 
expected the film to be compelling. 
It was his first contemporary hor- 
ror story since his Oscar-winning 
The Exorcist (1973), a landmark 
which led to the rebirth of the hor- 
ror film and a host of goofy, gory 
nutcases who appear in endless se- 
quels. 

Although Friedkin says that he 
is entertained by those splatter pic- 
tures, he hopes, in The Guardian, 
to summon a more universal fear 
than hockey masks and machetes. 

“The genre today,” Friedkin said, 
“has become basically a send-up of 
itself The Nightmare on Elm Street 
films are good films but they are 
perceived almost as comedies. That’s 
different than what we’re doing 
here ...” 

The cast includes Dwier Brown 
(Field of Dreams), Carey Lowell 
(Licence to Kill), and Jenny Sea- 
grove (Local Hero). 

Friedkin re-wrote Stephen Volk’s 

(Continued on page 63) 




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MADNESS 

HAS 

ITS PLACE 

by Larry Niven 


After far too long an absence, we are 
extremely pleased to welcome Larry 
Niven back to our pages. Mr. Niven’s 
distinguished literary career has 
included the Hugo- and Nebula-award 
winning novel Ringworld.a Hugo award 
for his unforgettable short story 
"Neutron Star”; and Hugos for three of 
his other excellent short stories as 
well. He is currently at work on two 
novels, Destiny's Road and The Ghost Ship, 
and he is writing the bible for future 
issues of DC Comics’ Green Lantern. 





mm 


I 

A lucky few of us know the good days before they’re gone. 

I remember my eighties. My job kept me in shape, and gave me enough 
variety to keep my mind occupied. My love life was imperfect but inter- 
esting. Modern medicine makes the old fairy tales look insipid; I almost 
never worried about my health. 

Those were the good days, and I knew them. I could remember worse. 

I can remember when my memory was better, too. That’s what this 
file is for. I keep it updated for that reason, and also to maintain my 
sense of purpose. 

The Monobloc had been a singles bar since the 2320s. 

In the ’30s I’d been a regular. I’d found Charlotte there. We held our 
wedding reception at the Monobloc, then dropped out for twenty-eight 
years. My first marriage, hers too, both in our forties. After the children 
grew up and moved away, after Charlotte left me too, I came back. 

The place was much changed. 

I remembered a couple of hundred bottles in the hologram bar display. 
Now the display was twice as large and seemed more realistic — better 
equipment, maybe — but only a score of bottles in the middle were liquors. 
The rest were flavored or carbonated water, high-energy drinks, elec- 
trolytes, a thousand kinds of tea; food to match, raw vegetables and fruits 
kept fresh by high-tech means, arrayed with low-cholesterol dips; bran 
in every conceivable form short of injections. 

The Monobloc had swallowed its neighbors. It was bigger, with cur- 
tained alcoves, and a small gym upstairs for working out or for dating. 

Herbert and Tina Schroeder still owned the place. Their marriage had 
been open in the ’30s. They’d aged since. So had their clientele. Some of 
us had married or drifted away or died of alcoholism; but word of mouth 
and the Velvet Net had maintained a continuous tradition. Twenty-eight 
years later they looked better than ever . . . wrinkled, of course, but lean 
and muscular, both ready for the Gray Olympics. Tina let me know before 
I could ask: she and Herb were lockstepped now. 

To me it was like coming home. 

For the next twelve years the Monobloc was an intermittent part of 
my life. 

I would find a lady, or she would find me, and we’d drop out. Or we’d 
visit the Monobloc and sometimes trade partners; and one evening we’d 
go together and leave separately. I was not evading marriage. Every 
woman I found worth knowing, ultimately seemed to want to know some- 
one else. 


20 


LARRY NIVEN 



I was nearly bald even then. Thick white hair covered my arms and 
legs and torso, as if my head hairs had migrated. Twelve years of running 
construction robots had turned me burly. From time to time some mus- 
cular lady would look me over and claim me. I had no trouble finding 
company. 

But company never stayed. Had I become dull? The notion struck me 
as funny. 

I had settled myself alone at a table for two, early on a Thursday 
evening in 2375. The Monobloc was half empty. The earlies were all 
keeping one eye on the door when Anton Brillov came in. 

Anton was shorter than me, and much narrower, with a face like an 
axe. I hadn’t seen him in thirteen years. Still, I’d mentioned the Monobloc; 
he must have remembered. 

I semaphored my arms. Anton squinted, then came over, exaggeratedly 
cautious until he saw who it was. 

“Jack Strather!” 

“Hi, Anton. So you decided to try the place?” 

“Yah.” He sat. “You look good.” He looked a moment longer and said, 
“Relaxed. Placid. How’s Charlotte?” 

“Left me after I retired. Just under a year after. There was too much 
of me around and I . . . maybe I was too placid? Anyway. How are you?” 

“Fine.” 

Twitchy. Anton looked twitchy. I was amused. “Still with the Holy 
Office?” 

“Only citizens call it that. Jack.” 

“I’m a citizen. Still gives me a kick. How’s your chemistry?” 

Anton knew what I meant and didn’t pretend otherwise. “I’m okay. I’m 
down.” 

“Kid, you’re looking over both shoulders at once.” 

Anton managed a credible laugh. “I’m not the kid any more. I’m a 
weekly.” 

The ARM had made me a weekly at forty-eight. They couldn’t turn 
me loose at the end of the day any more, because my body chemistry 
couldn’t shift fast enough. So they kept me in the ARM building Monday 
through Thursday, and gave me all of Thursday afternoon to shed the 
schitz madness. Another twenty years of that and I was even less flexible, 
so they retired me. 

I said, “You do have to remember. When you’re in the ARM building, 
you’re a paranoid schizophrenic. You have to be able to file that when 
you’re outside.” 

“Hah. How can anyone — ” 


MADNESS HAS ITS PLACE 


21 



“You get used to the schitz. After I quit, the difference was amazing. 
No fears, no tension, no ambition.” 

“No Charlotte?” 

“Well ... I turned boring. And what are you doing here?” 

Anton looked around him. “Much the same thing you are, I guess. 
Jack, am I the youngest one here?” 

“Maybe.” I looked around, doublechecking. A woman was distracting 
me, though I could see only her back and a flash of a laughing profile. 
Her back was slender and strong, and a thick white braid ran down her 
spine, center, two and a half feet of clean, thick white hair. She was in 
animated conversation with a blonde companion of Anton’s age plus a 
few. 

But they were at a table for two: they weren’t inviting company. I 
forced my attention back. “We’re gray singles, Anton. The young ones 
tend to get the message quick. We’re slower than we used to be. We date. 
You want to order?” 

Alcohol wasn’t popular here. Anton must have noticed, but he ordered 
guava juice and vodka and drank as if he needed it. This looked worse 
than Thursday jitters. I let him half finish, then said, “Assuming you 
can tell me — ” 

“I don’t know anything.” 

“I know the feeling. What should you know?” 

A tension eased behind Anton’s eyes. “There was a message from the 
Angel’s Pencil.” 

“Pencil . . . oh.” My mental reflexes had slowed down. The Angel’s 
Pencil had departed twenty years ago for . . . was it Epsilon Eridani? 
“Come on, kid, it’ll be in the boob cubes before you have quite finished 
speaking. Anything from deep space is public property.” 

“Hah! No. It’s restricted. I haven’t seen it myself Only a reference, 
and it must be more than ten years old.” 

That was peculiar. And if the Belt stations hadn’t spread the news 
through the solar system, that was peculiar. No wonder Anton was antsy. 
ARMs react that way to puzzles. 

Anton seemed to jerk himself back to here and now, back to the gray 
singles regime. “Am I cramping your style?” 

“No problem. Nobody hurries in the Monobloc. If you see someone you 
like — ” My fingers danced over lighted symbols on the rim of the table. 
“This gets you a map. Locate where she’s sitting, put the cursor on it. 
That gets you a display . . . hmm.” 

I’d set the cursor on the white-haired lady. I liked the readout. “Phoebe 
Garrison, seventy-nine, eleven or twelve years older than you. Straight. 
Won a Second in the Gray Jumps last year . . . that’s the Americas Skiing 


22 


LARRY NIVEN 



IMEWS 

FROM 



A PRIMITIVE WARRIOR TURNED 
HIGH-TECH GLADIATOR. NOW HE’S 
FIGHTING FOR HIS FREEDOM. 


Book One in an exciting new 
science fantasy triiogy from 
Rose Estes, b^tseiiing au- 
thor of the Greyhawk>Wven- 
ture series. 

He is Braldtfhe Hunter, war- 
rior lord and protector of his 
Ice Age tribe, trained to stalk 
evil predators that threaten his 
people... until a search for 
magical healing crystals 
begins a deadly odyssey. 

In a fateful moment of trick- 
ery and betrayal , Braldt is sold 
Into slavery— and banished to 
the hi-tech deathtrap known 
as Arena. Here Braldt’s skills 
as a hunter are pushed to their 
limit against creatures from 
other worlds. 

But as his next opponent is 
ready to challenge him in this 
lethal tournament, Braldt’s 
thoughts are bent on escape. 
First though, he must stay 
alive. 


f ^ I ,1 1^ 

* » ji' 


BY ROSE ESTES 


I i W--?’’ 





Cover art by Clyde Caldwell 
0-445-20970-4/$4.95 
(In Canada; S5.95) 


At Bookstores Everywhere 





Also 

this 

month: 

DRAGON’S 
TEETH 
by Lee 
Killough 


Rich, Influential people are 
being murdered. All under 
state-of-the-art security. And all 
broadcast on TV. The case Is 
public, too public. Police brass 
want detectives Janna Brill and 
Mama Maxwell to break It 
open— fast. 

But there are no fast answers. 
Only lots of witnesses, dues, and 
suspects. Put them all together 
and they prove the crimes were 
Impossible to commiti 

“Killough has become an author 
whose every new book Is a 
treat.” —Science Fiction 
Chronicie 


Cover art by Micbael Hernng 
0-445-20906-2/$495 
(In Canada: $5.95) 


At Bookstores Everywhere 


A WORD FROM 
Brian Thomsen 



Fantasy role-playing games can 
sometimes provide a very neces- 
sary escape from the trials and 
tribulations of civilization, much 
in the same way that a good book 
will. I’ve been a magic user, and 
gladiator in some forgotten land, 
and I have solved numerous 
crimes in the past and future. To be 
a hunter or a detective is some- 


times more fun than a job In the real 
world (though obviously there Is 
nothing more fun than being a 
senior editor at Questar). 

When you see me around, ask 
me what you would get If you 
crossed SHOGUN and WAR AND 
REMEMBRANCE, and set It In the 
far future? 


r POQuHf Uftfry f9W 






Matches for seventy and over. She could kick your tail if you don’t watch 
your manners. It says she’s smarter than we are, too. 

“Point is, she can check you out the same way. Or me. And she probably 
found this place through the Velvet Net, which is the computer network 
for unlocked lifestyles.” 

“So. Two males sitting together — ” 

“Anyone who thinks we’re bent can check if she cares enough. Bends 
don’t come to the Monobloc anyway. But if we want company, we should 
move to a bigger table.” 

We did that. I caught Phoebe Garrison’s companion’s eye. They played 
with their table controls, discussed, and presently wandered over. 

Dinner turned into a carouse. Alcohol was involved, but we’d left the 
Monobloc by then. When we split up, Anton was with Michiko. I went 
home with Phoebe. 

Phoebe had fine legs, as I’d anticipated, though both knees were teflon 
and plastic. Her face was lovely even in morning sunlight. Wrinkled, of 
course. She was two weeks short of eighty and wincing in anticipation. 
She ate with a cross-country skier’s appetite. We told of our lives as we 
ate. 

She’d come to Santa Maria to visit her oldest grandson. In her youth 
she’d done critical work in nanoengineering. The Board had allowed her 
four children. (I’d known I was outclassed.) All were married, scattered 
across the Earth, and so were the grandkids. 

My two sons had emigrated to the Belt while still in their twenties. 
I’d visited them once during an investigation, trip paid for by the United 
Nations — 

“You were an ARM? Really? How interesting! Tell me a story ... if 
you can.” 

“That’s the problem, all right.” 

The interesting tales were all classified. The ARM suppresses dan- 
gerous technology. What the ARM buries is supposed to stay buried. I 
remembered a kind of time compressor, and a field that would catalyze 
combustion, both centuries old. Both were first used for murder. If turned 
loose or rediscovered, either would generate more interesting tales yet. 

I said, “I don’t know anything current. They bounced me out when I 
got too old. Now I run construction robots at various spaceports.” 

“Interesting?” 

“Mostly placid.” She wanted a story? Okay. The ARM enforced more 
than the killer-tech laws, and some of those tales I could tell. 

“We don’t get many mother hunts these days. This one was wished on 
us by the Belt — ” And I told her of a lunie who’d sired two clones. One 
he’d raised on the Moon and one he’d left in the Saturn Conserve. He’d 


24 


LARRY NIVEN 



moved to Earth, where one clone is any normal citizen’s entire birthright. 
When we found him he was arranging to culture a third clone. . . . 


I dreamed a bloody dream. 

It was one of those; I was able to take control, to defeat what had 
attacked me. In the hlack of an early Sunday morning the shreds of the 
dream dissolved before I could touch them; hut the sensations remained. 
I felt strong, balanced, powerful, victorious. 

It took me a few minutes to become suspicious of this particular flavor 
of wonderful; but I’d had practice. I eased out from under Phoebe’s arm 
and leg and out of bed. I lurched into the medical alcove, linked myself 
up and fell asleep on the table. 

Phoebe found me there in the morning. She asked, “Couldn’t that wait 
till after breakfast?” 

“I’ve got four years on you and I’m going for infinity. So I’m careful,” 
I told her. Let her think the tube carried vitamin. It wasn’t quite a 
lie . . . and she didn’t quite believe me either. 

On Monday Phoebe went off to let her eldest grandson show her the 
local museums. I went back to work. 

In Death Valley a semicircle of twenty lasers points at an axial array 
of mirrors. Tracks run across the desert to a platform that looks like 
strands of spun caramel. Every hour or so a spacecraft trundles along 
the tracks, poses above the mirrors, and rises into the sky on a blinding, 
searing pillar of light. 

Here was where I and three companions and twenty-eight robots 
worked between emergencies. Emergencies were common enough. From 
time to time Glenn and Skii and ten or twenty machines had to be shipped 
off to Outback Field or Baikonur, while I held the fort at Death Valley 
Field. 

All of the equipment was old. The original mirrors had all been slaved 
to one system, and those had been replaced again and again. Newer 
mirrors were independently mounted and had their own computers, but 
even these were up to fifty years old and losing their flexibility. The 
lasers had to be replaced somewhat more often. Nothing was ready to 
fall apart, quite. 

But the mirrors have to adjust their shapes to match distorting air 
currents all the way up to vacuum; because the distortions themselves 
must focus the drive beam. A laser at 99.3 percent efficiency is keeping 
too much energy, getting too hot. At 99.1 percent something would melt, 
lost power would blow the laser into shrapnel, and a cargo would not 
reach orbit. 

My team had been replacing mirrors and lasers long before I came on 

MADNESS HAS ITS PLACE 25 



the scene. This circuit was nearly complete. We had already reconfigured 
some robots to begin replacing track. 

The robots worked alone while we entertained ourselves in the monitor 
room. If the robots ran into anything imfamiliar, they stopped and 
beeped. Then a story or songfest or poker game would stop just as ab- 
ruptly. 

Usually the beep meant that the robot had found an acute angle, an 
uneven surface, a surface not strong enough to bear a loaded robot, a 
bend in a pipe, a pipe where it shouldn’t be ... a geometrical problem. 
The robots couldn’t navigate just anywhere. Sometimes we’d have to 
unload the robot and move the load to a cart, by hand. Sometimes we 
had to pick the robot up with a crane and move it or turn it. Lots of what 
we did was muscle work. 

Phoebe joined me for dinner Thursday evening. 

She’d whipped her grandson at laser tag. They’d gone through the 
museum at Edwards AFB. They’d skied ... he needed to get serious 
about that, and maybe get some surgery too .... 

I listened and smiled and presently tried to tell her about my work. 
She nodded; her eyes glazed. I tried to tell her how good it was, how 
restful, after all those years in the ARM. 

The ARM: that got her interest back. Stet. I told her about the Henry 
Program. 

I’d been saving that. It was an embezzling system good enough to ruin 
the economy. It made Zachariah Henry rich. He might have stayed rich 
if he’d quit in time . . . and if the system hadn’t been so good, so dan- 
gerous, he might have ended in prison. Instead . . . well, let his tongue 
whisper secrets to the ears in the organ banks. 

I could speak of it because they’d changed the system. I didn’t say that 
it had happened twenty years before I joined the ARM. But I was still 
running out of declassified stories. I told her, “If a lot of people know 
something can be done, somebody’ll do it. We can suppress it and suppress 
it again — ” 

She pounced. “Like what?” 

“Like . . . well, the usual example is the first cold fusion system. They 
did it with palladium and platinum, but half a dozen other metals work. 
And organic superconductors: the patents listed a wrong ingredient. 
Various grad students tried it wrong and still got it. If there’s a way to 
do it, there’s probably a lot of ways.” 

“That was before there was an ARM. Would you have suppressed 
superconductors?” 

“No. What for?” 

“Or cold fusion?” 

“No.” 


26 


LARRY NIVEN 



“Cold fusion releases neutrons,” she said. “Sheath the generator with 
spent uranium, what do you get?” 

“Plutonium, I think. So?” 

“They used to make bombs out of plutonium.” 

“Bothers you?” 

“Jack, the fission bomb was it in the mass murder department. Like 
the crossbow. Like the Ayatollah’s Asteroid.” Phoebe’s eyes held mine. 
Her voice had dropped; we didn’t want to broadcast this all over the 
restaurant. “Don’t you ever wonder just how much of human knowledge 
is lost in that . . . black Limbo inside the ARM building? Things that 
could solve problems. Warm the Earth again. Ease us through the light- 
speed wall.” 

“We don’t suppress inventions unless they’re dangerous,” I said. 

I could have backed out of the argument; but that too would have 
disappointed Phoebe. Phoebe liked a good argument. My problem was 
that what I gave her wasn’t good enough. Maybe I couldn’t get angry 
enough . . . maybe my most forceful arguments were classified. . . . 

Monday morning, Phoebe left for Dallas and a granddaughter. There 
had been no war, no ultimatum, but it felt final. 

Thursday evening I was back in the Monobloc. 

So was Anton. “I’ve played it,” he said. “Can’t talk about it, of course.” 

He looked mildly bored. His hands looked like they were trying to 
break chunks off the edge of the table. 

I nodded placidly. 

Anton shouldn’t have told me about the broadcast from Angel’s Pencil. 
But he had; and if the ARM had noticed, he’d better mention it again. 

Company joined us, sampled and departed. Anton and I spoke to a pair 
of ladies who turned out to have other tastes. (Some bends like to bug 
the straights.) A younger woman joined us for a time. She couldn’t have 
been over thirty, and was lovely in the modem style . . . but hard, sharply 
defined muscle isn’t my sole standard of beauty. . . . 

I remarked to Anton, “Sometimes the vibes just aren’t right.” 

“Yeah. Look, Jack, I have carefully concealed a prehistoric Calvados 
in my apt at Maya. There isn’t really enough for four — ” 

“Sounds nice. Eat first?” 

“Stet. There’s sixteen restaurants in Maya.” 

A score of blazing rectangles meandered across the night, washing out 
the stars. The eye could still find a handful of other space artifacts, 
particularly around the moon. 

Anton flashed the beeper that would summon a taxi. I said, “So you 
viewed the call. So why so tense?” 


MADNESS HAS ITS PLACE 


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Security devices no bigger than a basketball rode the glowing sky, but 
the casual eye would not find those. One must assume they were there. 
Patterns in their monitor chips would match vision and sound patterns 
of a mugging, a rape, an injury, a cry for help. Those chips had gigabytes 
to spare for words and word patterns the ARM might find of interest. 

So: no key words. 

Anton said, “Jack, they tell a hell of a story. A . . . foreign vehicle 
pulled alongside Angela at four-fifths of legal max. It tried to cook them.” 

I stared. A spacecraft matched course with the Angel’s Pencil at eighty 
percent of lightspeed? Nothing man-built could do that. And warlike'? 
Maybe I’d misinterpreted everything. That can happen when you make 
up your code as you go along. 

But how could the Pencil have escaped? “How did Angela manage to 
phone home?” 

A taxi dropped. Anton said, “She sliced the bread with the, you know, 
motor. I said it’s a hell of a story.” 

Anton’s apartment was most of the way up the slope of Maya, the 
pyramidal arcology north of Santa Maria. Old wealth. 

Anton led me through great doors, into an elevator, down corridors. 
He played tour guide; “The Fertility Board was just getting some real 
power about the time this place went up. It was built to house a million 
people. It’s never been fully occupied.” 

“So?” 

“So we’re en route to the east face. Four restaurants, a dozen little 
bars. And here we stop — ” 

“This your apt?” 

“No. It’s empty, it’s always been empty. I sweep it for bugs, but the 
authorities ... I think they’ve never noticed.” 

“Is that your mattress?” 

“No. Kids. They’ve got a club that’s two generations old. My son tipped 
me off to this.” 

“Could we be interrupted?” 

“No. I’m monitoring them. I’ve got the security system set to let them 
in, but only when I’m not here. Now I’ll set it to recognize you. Don’t 
forget the number: Apt 23309.” 

“What is the ARM going to think we’re doing?” 

“Eating. We went to one of the restaurants, then came back and drank 
Calvados . . . which we will do, later. I can fix the records at Buffalo Bill. 
Just don’t argue about the credit charge, stet?” 

“But — Yah, stet.” Hope you won’t be noticed, that’s the real defense. 
I was thinking of bailing out . . . but curiosity is part of what gets you 

30 LARRY NIVEN 



into the ARM. “Tell your story. You said she sliced the bread with the, 
you know, motor?" 

“Mayhe you don’t remember. Angel’s Pencil isn’t your ordinary Bussard 
ramjet. The field scoops up interstellar hydrogen to feed a fusion-pumped 
laser. The idea was to use it for communications, too. Blast a message 
half across the galaxy with that. A Belter crewman used it to cut the 
alien ship in half” 

“There’s a communication you can live without. Anton . . . what they 
taught us in school. A sapient species doesn’t reach space unless the 
members learn to cooperate. They’ll wreck the environment, one way or 
another, war or straight libertarianism or overbreeding . . . remember?” 

“Sure.” 

“So do you believe all this?” 

“I think so.” He smiled painfully. “Director Bernhardt didn’t. He class- 
ified the message and attached a memo, too. Six years of flight aboard 
a ship of limited size, terminal boredom coupled with high intelligence 
and too much time, elaborate practical jokes, yadda yadda. Director 
Harms left it classified . . . with the cooperation of the Belt. Interesting?” 

“But he had to have that." 

“But they had to agree. There’s been more since. Angel’s Pencil sent 
us hundreds of detailed photos of the alien ship. It’s unlikely they could 
be faked. There are corpses. Big sort-of cats, orange, more than eight 
meters tall, big feet and elaborate hands with thumbs. We’re in mucking 
great trouble if we have to face those.” 

“Anton, we’ve had three hundred and fifty years of peace. We must be 
doing something right. The odds say we can negotiate.” 

“You haven’t seen them.” 

It was almost funny. Jack was trying to make me nervous. Twenty 
years ago the terror would have been fizzing in my blood. Better living 
through chemistry! This was all frightening enough; but my fear was a 
cerebral thing, and I was its master. 

I wasn’t nervous enough for Anton. “Jack, this isn’t just vaporware. 
A lot of those photos show what’s maybe a graviton generator, maybe 
not. Director Harms set up a lab on the moon to build one for us.” 

“Funded?” 

“Heavy funding. Somebody believes in this. But they’re getting results! 
It worksl” 

I mulled it. “Alien contact. As a species we don’t seem to handle that 
too well.” 

“Maybe this one can’t be handled at all.” 

“What else is being done?” 

“Nothing, or damn close. Silly suggestions, career-oriented crap de- 

MADNESS HAS ITS PLACE 31 



signed td make a bureau bigger . . . nobody wants to use the magic word. 
War.” 

“War. Three hundred and fifty years out of practice, we are. Maybe C. 
Cretemaster will save us.” I smiled at Anton’s bewilderment. “Look it 
up in the ARM records. There’s supposed to be an alien of sorts living 
in the cometary halo. He’s the force that’s been keeping us at peace this 
past three and a half centuries.” 

“Very funny.” 

“Mmm. Well, Anton, this is a lot more real for you than me. / haven’t 
yet seen anything upsetting.” 

I hadn’t called him a liar. I’d only made him aware that I knew nothing 
to the contrary. For Anton there might be elaborate proofs; but I’d seen 
nothing, and heard only a scary tale. 

Anton reacted gracefully. “Of course. Well, there’s still that bottle.” 

Anton’s Calvados was as special as he’d claimed, decades old and quite 
unique. He produced cheese and bread. Good thing: I was ready to eat 
his arm off. We managed to stick to harmless topics, and parted friends. 

The big catlike aliens had taken up residence in my soul. 

Aliens aren’t implausible. Once upon a time, maybe. But an ancient 
ETI in a stasis field had been in the Smithsonian since the opening of 
the twenty-second century, and a quite different creature — C. Crete- 
master’s real-life analog — had crashed on Mars before the century ended. 

Two spacecraft matching course at near lightspeed, that was just short 
of ridiculous. Kinetic energy considerations . . . why, two such ships col- 
liding might as well be made of antimatter! Nothing short of a gravity 
generator could make it work. But Anton was claiming a gravity gen- 
erator. 

His story was plausible in another sense. Faced with warrior aliens, 
the ARM would do only what they could not avoid. They would build a 
gravity generator because the ARM must control such a thing. Any 
further move was a step toward the unthinkable. The ARM took sole 
credit (and other branches of the United Nations also took sole credit) 
for the fact that Man had left war behind. I shuddered to think what 
force it would take to turn the ARM toward war. 

I would continue to demand proof of Anton’s story. Looking for proof 
was one way to learn more, and I resist seeing myself as stupid. But I 
believed him already. 

On Thursday we returned to suite 23309. 

“I had to dig deep to find out, but they’re not just sitting on their 
thumbs,” he said. “There’s a game going in Aristarchus Crater, Belt 
against flatlander. They’re playing peace games.” 

“Huh?” 


32 


LARRY NIVEN 



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“They’re making formats for contact and negotiation with hypothetical 
aliens. The models all have the look of those alien corpses, cats with bald 
tails, but they all think differently — ” 

“Good.” Here was my proof. I could check this claim. 

“Good. Sure. Peace games.” Anton was brooding. Twitchy. “What about 
war games?” 

“How would you run one? Half your soldiers would be dead at the 
end . . . unless you’re thinking of rifles with paint bullets. War gets more 
violent than that.” 

Anton laughed. “Picture every building in Chicago covered with scarlet 
paint on one side. A nuclear war game.” 

“Now what? I mean for us.” 

“Yah. Jack, the ARM isn’t doing anything to put the human race back 
on a war footing.” 

“Maybe they’ve done something they haven’t told you about.” 

“Jack, I don’t think so.” 

“They haven’t let you read all their files, Anton. Two weeks ago you 
didn’t know about peace games in Aristarchus. But okay. What should 
they be doing?” 

“I don’t know." 

“How’s your chemistry?” 

Anton grimaced. “How’s yours? Forget I said that. Maybe I’m back to 
normal and maybe I’m not.” 

“Yah, but you haven’t thought of anything. How about weapons? Can’t 
have a war without weapons, and the ARM’s been suppressing weapons. 
We should dip into their files and make up a list. It would save some 
time, when and if. I know of an experiment that might have been turned 
into an inertialess drive if it hadn’t been suppressed.” 

“Date?” 

“Early twenty-second. And there was a field projector that would make 
things burn, late twenty-third.” 

“I’ll find ’em.” Anton’s eyes took on a faraway look. “There’s the ar- 
chives. I don’t mean just the stuff that was built and then destroyed. The 
archives reach all the way back to the early twentieth. Stuff that was 
proposed, tanks, orbital beam weapons, kinetic energy weapons, biolog- 
icals — ” 

“We don’t want biologicals.” 

I thought he hadn’t heard. “Picture crowbars six feet long. A short 
bum takes them out of orbit, and they steer themselves down to anything 
with the silhouette you want ... a tank or a submarine or a limousine, 
say. Primitive stuff now, but at least it would do something.” He was 
really getting into this. The technical terms he was tossing off were 
masks for horror. He stopped suddenly, then, “Why not biologicals?” 


34 


LARRY NIVEN 



“Nasty bacteria tailored for us might not work on warcats. We want 
their biological weapons, and we don’t want them to have ours.” 

. . Stet. Now here’s one for you. How would you adjust a ’doc to make 
a normal person into a soldier?” 

My head snapped up. I saw the guilt spread across his face. He said, 
“I had to look up your dossier. Had to. Jack.” 

“Sure. All right. I’ll see what I can find.” I stood up. “The easiest way 
is to pick schitzies and train them as soldiers. We’d start with the same 
citizens the ARM has been training since . . . date classified, three 
hundred years or so. People who need the ’doc to keep their metabolism 
straight, or else they’ll ram a car into a crowd, or strangle — ” 

“We wouldn’t find enough. When you need soldiers, you need thou- 
sands. Maybe millions.” 

“True. It’s a rare condition. Well, good night, Anton.” 

I fell asleep on the ’doc table again. 

Dawn poked under my eyelids and I got up and moved toward the 
holophone. Caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror. Rethought. If David 
saw me looking like this, he’d be booking tickets to attend the funeral. 
So I took a shower and a cup of coffee first. 

My eldest son looked like I had; decidedly rumpled. “Dad, can’t you 
read a clock?” 

“I’m sorry. Really.” These calls are so expensive that there’s no point 
in hanging up. “How are things in Aristarchus?” 

“Clavius. We’ve been moved out. We’ve got half the space we used to, 
and we’d need twice the space to hold everything we own. Ah, the time 
change isn’t your fault. Dad, we’re all in Clavius now, all but Jennifer. 
She — ” David vanished. 

A mechanically soothing voice said, “You have inpinged on ARM police 
business. The cost of your call will be refunded.” 

I looked at the empty space where David’s face had been. I.wos ARM 
. . . but maybe I’d already heard enough. 

My granddaughter Jennifer is a medic. The censor program had reacted 
to her name in connection with David. 

David said she wasn’t with him. The whole family had been moved 
out but for Jennifer. 

If she’d stayed on in Aristarchus ... or been kept on . . . 

Human medics are needed when something unusual has happened to 
a human body or brain. Then they study what’s going on, with an eye 
to writing more programs for the ’docs. The bulk of these problems are 
psychological. 

Anton’s “peace games” must be stressful as Hell. 


MADNESS HAS ITS PLACE 


35 



II 


Anton wasn’t at the Monobloc Thursday. That gave me another week 
to rethink and recheck the programs I’d put on a dime disk; but I didn’t 
need it. 

I came back the next Thursday. Anton Brillov and Phoebe Garrison 
were holding a table for four. 

I paused — backlit in the doorway, knowing my expression was hid- 
den — then moved on in. “When did you get back?” 

“Saturday before last,” Phoebe said gravely. 

It felt awkward. Anton felt it too; but then, he would. I began to wish 
I didn’t ever have to see him on a Thursday night. 

I tried tact. “Shall we see if we can conscript a fourth?” 

“It’s not like that,” Phoebe said. “Anton and I, we’re together. We had 
to tell you.” 

But I’d never thought ... I’d never claimed Phoebe. Dreams are pri- 
vate. This was coming from some wild direction. “Together as in?” 

Anton said, “Well, not married, not yet, but thinking about it. And we 
wanted to talk privately.” 

“Like over dinner?” 

“A good suggestion.” 

“I like Buffalo Bill. Let’s go there.” 

Twenty-odd habitues of the Monobloc must have heard the exchange 
and watched us leave. Those three long-timers seem friendly enough, but 
too serious . . . and three’s an odd number . . . 

We didn’t talk until we’d reached Suite 23309. 

Anton closed the door before he spoke. “She’s in. Jack. Everything.” 

I said, “It’s really love, then.” 

Phoebe smiled. “Jack, don’t be offended. Choosing is what humans do.” 

Trite, I thought, and skip it. “That bit there in the Monobloc seemeii 
overdone. I felt excessively foolish.” 

“That was for them. My idea,” Phoebe said. “After tonight, one of us 
may have to go away. This way we’ve got an all-purpose excuse. You 
leave because your best friend and favored lady closed you out. Or Phoebe 
leaves because she can’t bear to ruin a friendship. Or big, burly Jack 
drives Anton away. See?” 

She wasn’t just in, she was taking over. Ah, well. “Phoebe, love, do 
you believe in murderous cats eight feet tall?” 

“Do you have any doubts. Jack?” 

“Not any more. I called my son. Something secretive is happening in 
Aristarchus, something that requires a medic.” 

She only nodded. “What have you got for us?” 


36 


LARRY NIVEN 



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I showed them my dime disk. “Took me less than a week. Run it in an 
autodoc. Ten personality choices. The chemical differences aren’t big, 
but . . . infantry, which means killing on foot and doesn’t have anything 
to do with children . . . where was I? Yah. Infantry isn’t at all like lo- 
gistics, and neither is like espionage, and Navy is different yet. We may 
have lost some of the military vocations over the centuries. We’ll have 
to re-invent them. This is just a first cut. I wish we had a way to try it 
out.” 

Anton set a dime disk next to mine, and a small projector. “Mine’s 
nearly full. The ARM’s stored an incredible range of dangerous devices. 
We need to think hard about where to store this. I even wondered if one 
of us should be emigrating, which is why — ” 

“To the Belt? Further?” 

“Jack, if this all adds up, we won’t have time to reach another star.” 

We watched stills and flat motion pictures of weapons and tools in 
action. Much of it was quite primitive, copied out of deep archives. We 
watched rock and landscape being torn, aircraft exploding, machines 
destroying other machines . . . and imagined flesh shredding. 

“I could get more, but I thought I’d better show you this first,” Anton 
said. 

I said, “Don’t bother.” 

“What? Jack?” 

“It only took us a week! Why risk our necks to do work that can be 
duplicated that fast?” 

Anton looked lost. “We need to do somethingl” 

“Well, maybe we don’t. Maybe the ARM is doing it all for us.” 

Phoebe gripped Anton’s wrist hard, and he swallowed some bitter re- 
tort. She said, “Maybe we’re missing something. Maybe we’re not looking 
at it right.” 

“What’s on your mind?” 

“Let’s find a way to look at it differently.” She was looking straight 
at me. 

I said, “Stoned? Drunk? Fizzed? Wired?” 

Phoebe shook her head. “We need the schitz view.” 

“Dangerous, love. Also, the chemicals you’re talking about are mas- 
sively illegal. I can’t get them, and Anton would be caught for sure — ” 
I saw the way she was smiling at me. “Anton, I’ll break your scrawny 
neck.” 

“Huh? Jack?” 

“No, no, he didn’t tell me,” Phoebe said hastily, “though frankly I’d 
think either of you might have trusted me that much. Jack! I remembered 
you in the ’doc that morning, and Anton coming down from that twitchy 
state on a Thursday night, and it all clicked.” 


38 


LARRY NIVEN 



“Okay.” 

“You’re a schitz, Jack. But it’s been a long time, hasn’t it?” 

“Thirteen years of peace,” I said. “They pick us for it, you know. Par- 
anoid schizophrenics, born with our chemistry screwed up, hair trigger 
temper and a skewed view of the universe. Most schitzies never have to 
feel that. We use the ’docs more regularly than you do and that’s that. 
But some of us go into the ARM. . . . Phoebe, your suggestion is still 
silly. Anton’s crazy four days out of the week, just like I used to be. 
Anton’s all you need.” 

“Phoebe, he’s right.” 

“No. The ARM used to be all schitzies, right? The genes have thinned 
out over three hundred years.” 

Anton nodded. “They tell us in training. The ones who could be Hitler 
or Napoleon or Castro, they’re the ones the ARM wants. They’re the ones 
you can send on a mother hunt, the ones with no social sense . . . but 
the Fertility Board doesn’t let them breed either, unless they’ve got 
something special. Jack, you were special, high intelligence or some- 
thing — ” 

“Perfect teeth, and I don’t get sick in free fall, and Charlotte’s people 
never develop back problems. That helped. Yah . . . but every century 
there are less of us. So they hire some Antons too, and make you crazy — ” 

“But carefully,” Phoebe said. “Anton’s not evolved for paranoia. Jack. 
You are. When they juice Anton up they don’t make him too crazy, just 
enough to get the viewpoint they want. I bet they leave the top man- 
agement boringly sane. But you, Jack — ” 

“I see it.” Centuries of ARM tradition were squarely on her side. 

“You can go as crazy as you like. It’s all natural, and medics have 
known how to handle it since Only One Earth. We need the schitz view- 
point, and we don’t have to steal the chemicals.” 

“Stet. When do we start?” 

Anton looked at Phoebe. Phoebe said, “Now?” 

We played Anton’s tape all the way through, to a running theme of 
graveyard humor. 

“I took only what I thought we could use,” Anton said. “You should 
have seen some of the rest. Agent Orange. Napalm. Murder stuff.” 

Phoebe said, “Isn’t this murder?” 

That remark might have been unfair. We were watching this bizarre 
chunky rotary-blade flyer. Fire leaped from underneath it, once and 
again . . . weapons of some kind. 

Anton said, “Aircraft design isn’t the same when you use it for murder. 
It changes when you expect to be shot at. Here — ” The picture had 

MADNESS HAS ITS PLACE 


39 



changed. “That’s another weapons platform. It’s not just fast, it’s sup- 
posed to hide in the sky. Jack, are you all right?” 

“I’m scared green. I haven’t felt any effects yet.” 

Phoebe said, “You need to relax. Anton delivers a terrific massage. I 
never learned.” 

She wasn’t kidding. Anton didn’t have my muscle, but he had big 
strangler’s hands. I relaxed into it, talking as he worked, liking the way 
my voice wavered as his hands pounded my back. 

“It hasn’t been that long since a guy like me let his ’doc run out of 
beta-dammasomething. An indicator light ran out and he didn’t notice. 
He tried to kill his business partner by bombing his partner’s house, and 
got some family members instead.” 

“We’re on watch,” Phoebe said. “If you go berserk we can handle it. 
Do you want to see more of this?” 

“We’ve missed something. Children, I’m a registered schitz. If I don’t 
use my ’doc for three days, they’ll be trying to find me before I remember 
I’m the Marsport Strangler.” 

Anton said, “He’s right, love. Jack, give me your door codes. If I can 
get into your apt, I can fix the records.” 

“Keep talking. Finish the massage, at least. We might have other 
problems. Do we want fruit juice? Munchies? Poodlike substances?” 

When Anton came back with groceries, Phoebe and I barely noticed. 

Were the warcats real? Could we fight them with present tech? How 
long did Sol system have? And the other systems, the more sparsely 
settled colony worlds? Was it enough to make tapes and blueprints of 
the old murder machines, or must we set to building clandestine facto- 
ries? Phoebe and I were spilling ideas past each other as fast as they 
came, and I had quite forgotten that I was doing something dangerous. 

I noticed myself noticing that I was thinking much faster than thoughts 
could spill from my lips. I remembered knowing that Phoebe was brighter 
than I was, and that didn’t matter either. But Anton was losing his 
Thursday edge. 

We slept. 'The old airbed was a big one. We woke to fruit and bread 
and dived back in. 

We re-invented the Navy using only what Anton had recorded of sea- 
going navies. We had to. There had never been space navies; the long 
peace had fallen first. 

I’m not sure when I slid into schitz mode. I’d spent four days out of 
seven without the ’doc, every week for forty-one years excluding vaca- 
tions. You’d think I’d remember the feel of my brain chemistry changing. 
Sometimes I do; but it’s the central me that changes, and there’s no way 
to control that. 

Anton’s machines were long out of date, and none had been developed 

40 LARRY NIVEN 



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even for interplanetary war. Mankind had found peace too soon. Pity. 
But if the warcats’ gravity generators could be copied before the warcats 
arrived, that alone could save us! 

Then again, whatever the cats had for weapons, kinetic energy was 
likely to be the ultimate weapon, however the mass was moved. Energy 
considerations don’t lie . . . I stopped trying to anticipate individual war 
machines; what I needed was overview. Anton was saying very little. 

I realized that I had been wasting my time making medical programs. 
Chemical enhancement was the most trivial of what we’d need to remake 
an army. Extensive testing would be needed, and then we might not get 
soldiers at all unless they retained some civil rights, or unless officers 
killed enough of them to impress the rest. Our limited pool of schitzies 
had better be trained as our officers. For that matter, we’d better start 
by taking over the ARM. They had all the brightest schitzies. 

As for Anton’s work in the ARM archives, the most powerful weapons 
had been entirely ignored. They were too obvious. 

I saw how Phoebe was staring at me, and Anton too, both gape-jawed. 

I tried to explain that our task was nothing less than the reorganization 
of humanity. Large numbers might have to die before the rest saw the 
wisdom in following our lead. The warcats would teach that lesson . . . but 
if we waited for them, we’d be too late. Time was breathing hot on our 
necks. 

Anton didn’t understand. Phoebe was following me, though not well, 
but Anton’s body language was pulling him back and closing him up 
while his face stayed blank. He feared me worse than he feared warcats. 

I began to understand that I might have to kill Anton. I hated him for 
that. 

We did not sleep Friday at all. By Saturday noon we should have been 
exhausted. I’d caught cat naps from time to time, we all had, but I was 
still blazing with ideas. In my mind the pattern of an interstellar invasion 
was shaping itself like a vast three-dimensional map. 

Earlier I might have killed Anton, because he knew too much or too 
little, because he would steal Phoebe from me. Now I saw that was foolish. 
Phoebe wouldn’t follow him. He simply didn’t have the . . . the internal 
power. As for knowledge, he was our only access to the ARM! 

Saturday evening we ran out of food . . . and Anton and Phoebe saw 
the final flaw in their plan. 

I found it hugely amusing. My ’doc was halfway across Santa Maria. 
They had to get me there. Me, a schitz. 

We talked it around. Anton and Phoebe wanted to check my conclu- 
sions. Fine: we’d give them the schitz treatment. But for that we needed 
my disk (in my pocket) and my ’doc (at the apt). So we had to go to my 


42 


LARRY NIVEN 



apt. With that in mind, we shaped plans for a farewell bacchanal. Anton 
ordered supplies. Phoebe got me into a taxi. When I thought of other 
destinations she was persuasive. And the party was waiting . . . 

We were a long time reaching the ’doc. There was beer to be dealt 
with, and a pizza the size of Arthur’s Round Table. We sang, though 
Phoebe couldn’t hold a tune. We took ourselves to bed. It had been years 
since my urge to rut ran so high, so deep, backed by a sadness that ran 
deeper yet and wouldn’t go away. 

When I was too relaxed to lift a finger, we staggered singing to the 
’doc with me hanging limp between them. I produced my dime disk, but 
Anton took it away. What was this? They moved me onto the table and 
set it working. I tried to explain: they had to lie down, put the disk 
here . . . but the circuitry found my blood loaded with fatigue poisons, 
and put me to sleep. 

Sunday noon: 

Anton and Phoebe seemed embarrassed in my presence. My own mem- 
ories were bizarre, embarrassing. I’d been guilty of egotism, arrogance, 
self-centered lack of consideration. Three dark blue dots on Phoebe’s 
shoulder told me that I’d brushed the edge of violence. But the worst 
memory was of thinking like some red handed conqueror, and out loud. 

They’d never love me again. 

But they could have brought me into the apt and straight to the ’doc. 
Why didn’t they? 

While Anton was out of the room I caught Phoebe’s smile in the corner 
of my eye, and saw it fade as I turned. An old suspicion surfaced and has 
never faded since. 

Suppose that the women I love are all attracted to Mad Jack. Somehow 
they recognize my schitz potential, though they find my sane state dull. 
There must have been a place for madness throughout most of human 
history. So men and women had sought in each other the capacity for 
madness. . . . 

And so what? Schitzies kill. The real Jack Strather is too dangerous 
to be let loose. 

And yet ... it had been worth doing. From that strange fifty-hour 
session I remembered one real insight. We spent the rest of Sunday 
discussing it, making plans, while my central nervous system returned 
to its accustomed, unnatural state. Sane Jack. 

Anton Brillov and Phoebe Garrison held their wedding reception in 
the Monoblo(x I stood as Best Man, bravely, cheerful, running over with 
congratulatiTOs, staying carefully sober. 

A week later I was among the asteroids. At the Monobloc they said 

MADNESS HAS ITS PLACE 43 



that Jack Strather had fled Earth after his favored lady deserted him 
for his best friend. 


Ill 

Things ran smoother for me because John Junior had made a place for 
himself in Ceres. 

Even so, they had to train me. Twenty years ago I’d spent a week in 
the Belt. It wasn’t enough. Training and a Belt citizen’s equipment used 
up most of my savings and two months of my time. 

Time brought me to Mercury, and the lasers, eight years ago. 

Lightsails are rare in the inner solar system. Between Venus and 
Mercury there are still lightsail races, an expensive, uncomfortable, and 
dangerous sport. Cargo craft once sailed throughout the asteroid belt, 
until fusion motors became cheaper and more dependable. 

The last refuge of the light-sail is a huge, empty region: the cometary 
halo, Pluto, and beyond. The light-sails are all cargo craft. So far from 
Sol, their thrust must be augmented by lasers, the same Mercury lasers 
that sometimes hurl an unmanned probe into interstellar space. 

These were different from the launch lasers I was familiar with. They 
were enormously larger. In Mercury’s lower gravity, in Mercury’s wind- 
less environment, they looked like crystals caught in spiderwebs. When 
the lasers fired the fragile support structures wavered like spiderweb in 
a wind. Each stood in a wide black pool of solar collector, as if tar paper 
had been scattered at random. A collector sheet that lost fifty percent 
of power was not removed. We would add another sheet, but continue to 
use all the available power. 

Their power output was dangerous to the point of fantasy. For safety’s 
sake the Mercury lasers must be continually linked to the rest of the 
solar system across a lightspeed delay of several hours. The newer solar 
collectors also picked up broadcasts from space, or from the control center 
in Challenger Crater. Mercury’s lasers must never lose contact. A beam 
that strayed where it wasn’t supposed to could do untold damage. 

They were spaced all along the planet’s equator. They were hundreds 
of years apart in design, size, technology. They fired while the sun was 
up and feeding their square miles of collectors, with a few fusion gen- 
erators for backup. They flicked from target to target as the horizon 
moved. When the sun set, it set for thirty-odd Earth days, and that was 
plenty of time to make repairs — 

“In general, that is.” Kathry Perritt watched my eyes to ife sure I was 
paying attention. I felt like a schoolboy again. “In general we can repair 

44 LARRY NIVEN 




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and update each laser station in turn and still keep ahead of the dawn. 
But come a quake, we work in broad daylight and like it.” 

“Scary,” I said, too cheerfully. 

She looked at me. “You feel nice and cool? That’s a million tons of soil, 
old man, and a layer cake of mirror sheeting on top of that, and these 
old heat exchangers are still the most powerful ever built. Daylight 
doesn’t scare you? You’ll get over that.” 

Kathry was a sixth generation Belter from Mercury, taller than me 
by seven inches, not very strong, but extremely dextrous. She was my 
boss. I’d be sharing a room with her . . . and yes, she rapidly let me know 
that she expected us to be bedmates. 

I was all for that. Two months in Ceres had showed me that Belters 
respond to social signals I don’t know. I had no idea how to seduce anyone. 

Sylvia and Myron had been born on Mars in an enclave of areologists 
digging out the cities beneath the deserts. Companions from birth, they’d 
married at puberty. They were addicted to news broadcasts. News could 
get them arguing. Otherwise they behaved as if they could read each 
other’s minds; they hardly talked to each other or to anyone else. 

We’d sit around the duty room and wait, and polish our skills as sto- 
rytellers. Then one of the lasers would go quiet, and a tractor the size 
of some old Chicago skyscraper would roll. 

Rarely was there much of a hurry. One laser would fill in for another 
until the Monster Bug arrived. Then the robots, riding the Monster Bug 
like one of Anton’s aircraft carriers, would scatter ahead of us and set 
to work. 

Two years after my arrival, my first quake shook down six lasers in 
four different locations, and ripped a few more loose from the sunlight 
collectors. Landscape had been shaken into new shapes. The robots had 
some trouble. Sometimes Kathry could reprogram. Otherwise her team 
had to muscle them through, with Kathry to shout orders and me to 
supply most of the muscle. 

Of the six lasers, five survived. They seemed built to survive almost 
anything. The robots were equipped to spin new support structure and 
to lift the things into place, with a separate program for each design. 

Maybe John Junior hadn’t used influence in my behalf Flatlander 
muscles were useful, when the robots couldn’t get over the dust pools or 
through the broken rock. For that matter, maybe it wasn’t some Belt 
tradition that made Kathry claim me on sight. Sylvia and Myron weren’t 
sharing; and I might have been female, or bend. Maybe she thought she 
was lucky. 

After we’d remounted the lasers that survived, Kathry said, “They’re 
all obsolete anyway. They’re not being replaced.” 


46 


LARRY NIVEN 



“That’s not good,” I said. 

“Well, good and bad. Light-sail cargos are slow. If the light wasn’t 
almost free, why bother? The interstellar probes haven’t sent much back 
yet, and we might as well wait. At least the Belt Speakers think so.” 

“Do I gather I’ve fallen into a kind of blind alley?” 

She glared at me. “You’re an immigrant flatlander. What did you 
expect. First Speaker for the Belt? You thinking of moving on?” 

“Not really. But if the job’s about to fold — ” 

“Another twenty years, mayhe. Jack, I’d miss you. Those two — ” 

“It’s all right, Kathry. I’m not going.” I waved both arms at the blazing 
dead landscape and said, “I like it here,” and smiled into her bellow of 
laughter. 

I beamed a tape to Anton when I got the chance. 

"If I was ever angry, I got over it, as I hope you’ve forgotten anything 
I said or did while I was, let’s say, running on automatic. I’ve found 
another life in deep space, not much different from what I was doing on 
Earth . . . though that may not last. These light-sail pusher lasers are a 
blast from the past. Time gets them, the quakes get them, and they’re not 
being replaced. Kathry says twenty years. 

"You said Phoebe left Earth, too. Working with an asteroid mining 
setup? If you’re still trading tapes, tell her I’m all right and I hope she is 
too. Her career choice was better than mine, I expect . . .’’ 

I couldn’t think of anything else to do. 

Three years after I expected it, Kathry asked. “Why did you come out 
here? It’s none of my business, of course — ” 

Customs differ: it took her three years in my bed to work up to this. 
I said, “Time for a change,” and “I’ve got children and grandchildren on 
the Moon and Ceres and Floating Jupiter.” 

“Do you miss them?” 

I had to say yes. The result was that I took half a year off to bounce 
around the solar system. I found Phoebe, too, and we did some catching 
up; but I still came back early. My being away made us both antsy. 

Kathry asked again a year later. I said, “What I did on Earth was a 
lot like this. The difference is, on Earth I’m dull. Here — am I dull?” 

“You’re fascinating. You won’t talk about the ARM, so you’re fasci- 
nating and mysterious. I can’t believe you’d be dull just because of where 
you are. Why did you leave, really?” 

So I said, “There was a woman.” 

“What was she like?” 

“She was smarter than me. I was a little dull for her. So she left, and 
that would have been okay. But she came back to my best friend.” I 
shifted uncomfortably and said, “Not that they drove me off Earth.” 


MADNESS HAS ITS PLACE 


47 



“No?” 

“No. I’ve got everything I once had herding construction robots on 
Earth, plus one thing that I wasn’t bright enough to miss. I lost my sense 
of purpose when I left the ARM.” 

I noticed that Myron was listening. Sylvia was watching the holo walls, 
the three that showed the face of Mercury: rocks blazing like coals, with 
only the robots and the lasers to give the illusion of life. The fourth we 
kept changing. Just then it showed a view up the trunk into the waving 
branches of the tremendous redwood they’ve been growing for three 
hundred years, in Hovestraydt City on the moon. 

“These are the good times,” I said. “You have to notice, or they’ll go 
right past. We’re holding the stars together. Notice how much dancing 
we do? I’d be too old and creaky for that — Sylvia, what?” 

Sylvia was shaking my shoulder. I heard it as soon as I stopped talking: 
"Tombaugh Station relayed this picture, the last broadcast from the Fan- 
tasy Prince. Once again, the Fantasy Prince has apparently been — ” 

Starscape glowed within the fourth holo wall. Something came out of 
nowhere, moving hellishly fast, and stopped so quickly that it might 
have been a toy. It was egg-shaped, studded with what I remembered as 
weapons. 

Phoebe won’t have made her move yet. The warcats will have to be 
deep in the solar system before her asteroid mining setup can be any 
deterrent. Then one or another warcat ship will find streams of slag 
sprayed across its path, impacting at comet speeds. 

By now Anton must know whether the ARM actually has plans to 
repel an interstellar invasion. 

Me, I’ve already done my part. I worked on the computer shortly after 
I first arrived. Nobody’s tampered with it since. The dime disk is in place. 

We kept the program relatively simple. Until and unless the warcats 
destroy something that’s being pushed by a laser from Mercury, nothing 
will happen. The warcats must condemn themselves. Then the affected 
laser will lock onto the warcat ship . . . and so will every Mercury laser 
that’s getting sunlight. Twenty seconds, then the system goes back to 
normal until another target disappears. 

If the warcats can be persuaded that Sol system is defended, maybe 
they’ll give us time to build defenses. 

Asteroid miners dig deep for fear of solar storms and meteors. Phoebe 
might survive. We might survive here, too, with shielding built to block 
the hellish sun, and laser cannon to battle incoming ships. But that’s 
not the way to bet. 

We might get one ship. 

It might be worth doing. • 

48 


LARRY NIVEN 



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FOR A PRICE 

by Mary Rosenblum 

I 





I 




art: Janet Aulisio 



Mary Rosenblum is a 1988^ 

graduate'of the Clarion Writers” 
Workshop whocurrently writes full time. 
Over the course of her varied career^ 
Ms. Rosenblum has broken horses for a living, 
worked in endocrine research, raised 
goats, and been a commercial 
cheesemaker. "For a Price” 
is her first sale. 



Reed climbed into the campground behind the two-bit county fair, 
after the same cop cruised past him twice in fifteen minutes. The mirror- 
shades had scanned him too intently. And a vagrancy bust would be bad 
news — the computers would pick up the California warrant in two elec- 
tronic seconds, and the game would be over. 

Damn Raymond to hell. 

Trailers and campers lined the fence, crowded in between tall pines. 
They belonged to exhibitors and carny folk. Reed squinted through the 
mesh, saw only curtained windows and empty lawn chairs. The coast 
was clear. Pack dangling from his shoulder, he dug his sneakered toes 
into the rusty fence and began to climb. A cow bawled in the distance 
and Reed flinched, stabbing his thigh on the wire points and praying 
that the blank-eyed trailers shielded him from the rest of the camp- 
ground. As he swung his leg over, someone shouted hoarsely, off to his 
left. 

Damn. Reed heaved himself over the top of the fence and dropped to 
the slick pine needles. Run. No, don’t run, you idiot. Heart pounding, he 
held his breath, but there was no further alarm. Only someone yelling 
at a kid. He sucked a scratched palm, fighting the tension that kept 
winding tighter and tighter in his chest. 

It had seemed so easy. Just disappear. No one was going to look too 
hard for him. It wasn’t like he was a murderer or a bank robber. But he 
hadn’t been prepared for the tension — everyone knew who he was; every- 
one was after him. . . . 

Someday, Raymond. Someday you’re going to pay for all this. Trying 
to look casual, Reed limped away from the fence. 

Pine shade dappled the needled ground. T-shirts and bright towels 
flapped on a rope clothesline strung between two dusty trailers; the 
breeze dried the sweat on Reed’s face. Four trailers farther up, three 
girls lounged on blankets spread over stacked hay-bales, brushing green 
nail polish onto their toenails. They leaned their heads together and 
giggled, eyes following him with sly interest. 

Reed flushed and hurried past, feeling conspicuous and angry. Where 
the hell was the entrance to the fair? A bored man slouched on a sagging 
picnic table, reading a newspaper. Boxes of cheap glassware and teddy 
bears with pastel fur stuffed the back of a seedy white station wagon. 
Carnival prizes? Someone was frying bacon, and Reed strolled nonchal- 
antly in the other direction, stomach growling. 

A bird trilled in the branches over Reed’s head, and the door to a big 
pickup camper swung in the breeze. Reed jumped as it banged against 
the side of the camper. 

Some fool forgot to lock up. Reed’s shoulderblades twitched, and he 
could feel the thin fold of the solitary twenty in his pocket. Trying hard 


FOR A PRICE 


51 



to look like he was on his way to take a nap, he strolled down the narrow 
space between the camper and a blue and white trailer. Fool, a part of 
his mind was screaming. You’re in enough hot water already. 

Yeah. For thirty grand I didn’t steal. He smiled, and it felt ugly. What 
did a little petty theft matter at this point? “Shirley?” he called through 
the open door. Not too loud, but loud enough to wake a sleeper. “Hey, 
Shirley?” No answer. 

Heart racing, he swung himself up into the hot, stuffy twilight, took 
a breath of last night’s hamburgers and unmade beds. Greasy pans clut- 
tered the little propane stove. Cash? He opened cupboards, ears straining, 
muscles twitching with every rustle of pine needles. He found dishes and 
clothes and a half-empty bottle of bourbon. No money. He slid his palms 
under the mattress of the bunk bed that had been built-in above the 
cramped dining booth. Nothing there, either. Damn, damn, damn. He 
banged his fist on the cigarette-burned Formica of the table. 

“You won’t find what you’re looking for in here.” The voice sounded 
like the wind in the branches, dry, rustling, and amused. 

Reed froze, his heart pounding in slow, heavy strokes. Shit. Everything 
he tried came up shit. He turned around slowly, expecting cops, a gun, 
heavy artillery. 

A girl smiled up at him from the doorway, one hip cocked against the 
frame. She had pale skin, and black eyes that glittered from beneath a 
fringe of jet bangs. She looked about sixteen. Reed opened his mouth to 
breathe, and felt the blood seep back into his chest. 

“Sorry,” he said thickly, and tried a smile. “I think I wandered into 
the wrong trailer.” Original. He edged toward her. Just let me past, kid. 

“I can help you, you know.” She quirked one fine eyebrow at him and 
didn’t move. “Yes, I think I can,” she said, and tapped her red, red lips 
with white-gloved fingers. She had a pointed, elfin face, and was dressed 
in white — gloves, shirt, and pants — except for a vest patterned in black 
and multicolored diamonds. Reed wondered if she was a clown. 

“Look,” he said, “I really feel like an idiot, barging in here like this.” 
His tongue stumbled over the words. “You don’t know which trailer 
belongs to a guy named Paul, do you? Paul Marquette,” he rushed on. 
“He told me to drop by.” 

She smiled at him and didn’t move. 

His ploy wasn’t working. Reed swallowed panic. She knew damn well 
what he was doing in her trailer. She was playing with him — had prob- 
ably already called the cops. He could read it in the mocking curve of 
her smile. Reed’s muscles bunched into knots. Knock her flat backward 
out of the doorway, jump down, and run like hell. Sure. Over six feet of 
chainlink and out into a hayfield as big as Rhode Island, with nice, bare 


52 


MARY ROSENBLUM 



country roads all around? Uh huh. How ’bout into the crowd, with this 
brat screaming rape behind him? 

“Sit down,” she commanded, and he sat down hard as his muscles 
involuntarily obeyed her. 

You screwed up again, he told himself furiously. You deserve the Ray- 
monds. You really do. 

“I don’t know if that’s true,” she said, as if he had spoken out loud. 
“But you’re not a very good thief.” Her small mouth shaped a red smile, 
and she reached for the bourbon bottle in the cupboard over the sink. 
“You’d like a drink,” she said conversationally; it wasn’t a question. She 
proceeded to fish ice cubes out of the tiny refrigerator beneath the counter 
and pour him one. 

“Thanks,” he said, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. 
I am dreaming, he thought. Or else this bitch is playing some kind of 
really weird game. 

The whiskey was smooth and warm and went down easily, softening 
some of Reed’s tension. He watched the girl over the rim of the glass. 
Maybe this was a come-on. Her black eyes watched him, still mocking, 
and he squirmed uncomfortably. Bored seduction didn’t fit, somehow. He 
couldn’t pin down her age. She was older than he had thought, but slender 
as a boy, without the slightest hint of sex. Twenty-five — about his age? 
The face fit, but that didn’t feel right either. 

“What kind of game are you playing?” The bourbon was loosening all 
kinds of knots in his brain, making him reckless. “Let’s cut the fooling 
around. You know I broke in here.” He glared into her young-old face. 

“My name is Celila.” She perched on the corner of the Formica table 
as if he hadn’t spoken, swinging one foot with the deft, restless flick of 
a cat’s tail. “Tell me what you’re running from.” 

It was another command. Reed took a swallow of his drink and told 
her. He told her the whole damn, sad, stupid story about old-buddy 
Ra3miond and his kind offer of a job in his dental supply company when 
Reed was down on his luck. How dear Raymond went to bat with his 
partner over Reed’s ineptitude and how the whole, damn roof fell in a 
month ago when the thirty grand turned up missing and Raymond 
pointed out his old friend with a pained, self-righteous face. He told her 
because he couldn’t help it and because he wanted to tell someone. 

“He set me up, the SOB.” Reed closed his jaw so hard that the muscles 
in his face ached. “I did what he and the senior bookkeeper told me and 
didn’t ask any questions and now, no one believes I could be that gullible. 
Little do they know.” The laugh stuck in his throat. Plead guilty, his 
lawyer had said. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a year in minimum security. 

No thanks. I’m not lucky. Reed tilted the glass until the ice cubes 
bumped his lip. He’d jumped bail and run, instead. 


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“I want to kill Raymond,” he said thickly and it was hotly, vividly 
true. He wanted to stab him, gut him, watch him bleed. The whiskey 
was soaking into Reed’s empty stomach, making him dizzy. 

“Revenge.” Celila said it meditatively, with the tone of someone sa- 
voring a fine wine. “It’s such a lovely, complex thing.” Her tone became 
serious. “But there’s always a price. Remember that.” She lifted one 
white finger. 

“You’d have to take an lOU,” he said, and that seemed terribly funny. 
He felt drunk — too drunk for the amount of liquor he’d had. Time to get 
out of here. He got to his feet in the cramped space between bench and 
table, and as he wavered a little from the whiskey, she tilted her face 
up to him. 

“lOUs are always acceptable,” she said. Her dark brows curved into 
a speculative arch, and she leaned back lightly against his arm. The 
contact was electric — literally electric, as if her skin carried a static 
charge. Reed could almost feel his hair standing on end. 

He’d been mistaken when he’d thought of her as a child. She was a 
woman, all right; sex rose from her skin like a rich, musky perfume. 
Reed swallowed, an erection pressing hard against his pants, his mouth 
dry with desire. 

“Not yet.” She placed one gloved palm lightly against his chest and 
he couldn’t move. “I will give you your vengeance,” she said. “I’ll give 
you Raymond.” 

Reed stood still, sweating, frozen into stone by that pale hand. Her 
skin was actually white. Snow white. Bone white. She wasn’t wearing 
gloves — ^you could see the delicate molding of muscle and tendon. 

Makeup, he told himself. “For my lOU or my soul?” He laughed 
hoarsely, wanting to kiss her red mouth. 

“I’m not your Christian devil.” Her scornful laughter sounded like 
dissonant silver bells. “You can call me magic, if you want. I am . . . magic.” 
She smiled at him. 

Magic? He swallowed the dryness in his throat. “Yeah, sure.” Her 
fingers held him motionless, cool as china, and he didn’t laugh. 

“That cop didn’t like your looks at all, and he’s on duty until midnight,” 
she said. “He’ll pick you up if you try to hitchhike into the city.” Her 
tone carried the solid certainty of yesterday’s news. “Stay here to- 
night . . . and I will give you revenge.” 

Hell, why not. Reed laughed breathlessly. Life was full of why nots 
right now. The whys had run out last week when he skipped bail. 

She took his hand, and the touch sent lightning racing up his arm to 
explode in his brain. He wanted to grab her, wrap his arms around that 
slender white body. He wanted her, more than he could ever remember 
wanting a woman in his life. 


54 


MARY ROSENBLUM 



He didn’t touch her. He wasn’t sure he could. Magic? Reed laughed 
again, tasting whiskey on his breath. Dizzy and drunk, he let her lead 
him out of the trailer, past the tents and campers and into the fairground 
itself. 

Blue twilight was deepening into darkness, and the fair was coming 
to life. Harried parents scurried after shrieking children, and pimply 
teenagers clutched the hands of plump girls who wore identical tank tops 
and had the same permed blonde hair. Weatherbeaten farmers lounged 
along the livestock barns. At one end of the fairground, the rodeo was 
getting underway beneath banks of big floodlights. The announcer’s voice 
crackled unintelligibly, and the crowd roared. 

Two girls trotted by on restless horses, dressed in sequined western 
costumes and black cowboy hats decorated with expensive silver. One 
of the horses snorted and skittered sideways, nearly swinging its thick 
haunches into Celila. 

“You should be more careful,” Celila said in a low, pleasant voice. 

The rider tossed her a disdainful look and kicked her horse into a trot, 
showering them with clods of dirt. Celila smiled after her. Without warn- 
ing, the chunky bay squealed and reared, bucking hard across the dirt 
track. The girl landed flat in the dust and the horse stepped on the silver- 
trimmed hat. Someone guffawed from the campground shadows, and the 
girl burst into tears. 

“Magic, right?” Reed laced his fingers through Celila’s cool, white ones. 

“Yes.” The small, red smile came and went. They had reached the long 
livestock barns; she spun lightly away from him, dancing through the 
crowd in the direction of the midway. 

Reed laughed and stumbled after her, shouldering his way through 
the brightly dressed crowd. Magic? He wanted to believe in a magic that 
could dump a snotty brat into the dirt. He might have a lot of use for a 
magic like that. Strings of colored lights crisscrossed the midway and 
turned the Ferris wheel into a revolving wheel of color. Reed took a deep 
breath of grease, cotton candy, barbecuing chicken, and the sharp-woolly 
smell of animals. Dust filled the air. A mediocre singer sobbed out a 
country-western tale of heartbreak, carnies wheedled the credulous out 
of dimes and quarters, and a thousand voices shouted, laughed, and 
squealed. He trailed Celila down the midway. 

“Three darts for a buck. Break one little balloon and win your girl a 
teddy bear.” The skinny kid’s adam’s apple bobbed above his blue shirt. 
American Carnivals was embroidered on the pocket, and the fabric clung 
damply to his back. “Pretty thin crowd,” the kid said to Celila. His eyes 
slid sideways to Reed’s face and away again. “Marks are real tight with 
a buck.” 

“It’ll get better, Kev.” A tough, moon-faced woman called from the 

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penny-pitch stand across the aisle. “Moon’s full,” she said, and shoved 
her hands into the canvas apron cinched around her thick waist. Coins 
jingled. “It’ll pick up, won’t it, Celila?” She looked at Reed, too, but, as 
he turned away, he could have sworn that she bent her knee to Celila 
in a stiff, fractional curtsey. 

“They know me,” Celila said to Reed, and showed him the tips of her 
teeth in a smile. Still holding his eyes, she tossed a casual hand. Silver 
dimes showered through the air, spinning, shedding light like falling 
stars. Each one landed in a glass dish on the thick woman’s stand. 

Onlookers oohed and Reed hurried after Celila. She seemed to leave 
a trail of light behind her, and it pulled him along, as if it were a string 
or an umbilicus anchored to his chest. He wasn’t sure he could break it, 
even if he had wanted to, but he didn’t want to break it. He didn’t want 
to lose track of this strange carnival clown who promised magic and 
revenge and spun dimes through the air with impossible accuracy. 

“Three shots for a buck — win your girl a teddy bear . . . pitch a dime, 
a thin dime takes home a glass — three rings on the bottle and you win 

The crowd parted like water in front of Celila. Reed watched the carnies 
greet her from behind the scarred counters of their booths, interrupting 
their pitches. Some of them met her eyes and some of them didn’t. Reed 
watched shoulders tilt and hunch, watched bored, wary faces shift and 
change as Celila approached, trying to pin down what it was that he saw. 
Respect. That was it. Respect and . . . fear. 

“They know me.” She breathed the words in his ear, and Reed jumped, 
because a moment ago, she had been halfway down the aisle, in front of 
the duck-pond game. “Open your eyes,” she said. She waved her hand 
gracefully, and Reed looked around at the dusty crowds and the sneering 
carnies. 

Suddenly, it was magic. 

Crystal dishes glittered in the toss-a-coin booth, pandas and poodles 
smiled above the dart-boards. Their fur was pink and crimson velvet and 
their eyes were topaz and alive. Darts soared like flying fish above the 
crowd. The roller-coaster roared like a dragon as it leaped from its track, 
trailing fire and the thrilled screams of its riders. 

Magic. Every booth, every strut in the ferris wheel, every face and arm 
and hand, all were outlined in clear light. Tired women moved like 
dancers, full of sex and energy, hair flowing, figures lush and inviting. 
Middle-aged men walked like athletes. Everyone was winning priceless 
treasure, riding dragons — drunk with sensuality. Bills, children, and 
next month’s rent were forgotten. This was a magic night, and there was 
no morning. Reed looked around at the wide-eyed faces. These people 


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believed. Right here, in this place, in this now, everything was bright 
and beautiful and real. 

“Now, you see.” Celila’s fingers brushed his cheek, light as moth wings. 
“Tonight, they belong to me.” She held out her hand, lips curved in a 
feral smile. 

Six eggs lay in her palm, dyed purple and pink and green, like Easter 
eggs. Before Reed could speak, she began to juggle. She tossed the eggs 
lightly into the air, slowly at first, then faster and faster, until they 
blurred into a hoop of woven color. The bright ring made Reed dizzy, and 
the air wavered like heat waves above an August highway. 

The midway crowd murmured and closed in around them. Reed could 
feel their belief It flowed through the crowd like electricity. Housewives, 
carpenters, adolescents in punked hair and black leather — Celila was 
right — they belonged to her. 

Belief is power, Reed thought, and shivered. 

Celila smiled down at him. She was growing, expanding until she stood 
straddle-legged above the midway, holding a hoop of burning color in her 
hands. Darkness filled the space bounded by the whirling eggs, expand- 
ing to swallow Celila, the roller-coaster, and the crowded fairground. 

Sparks danced in the darkness, became flickering torchlight illumi- 
nating the rough stone wall of a cave. A pig grunted on a stone altar. 
Women surrounded it, dressed in long, earth-colored robes, their faces 
solemn and full of shadow. They were chanting. The hair on the back of 
Reed’s neck prickled as one of the women stepped forward. She lifted a 
gleaming blade, cut the pig’s throat with one swift stroke. Red blood 
spurted out across the old, stained stone, and the woman’s hood fell back. 

Reed stared into Celila’s pale, burning face. “Who are you?” he whis- 
pered. He could feel the pig’s blood on his face, and his heart began to 
pound in a slow, fierce rhythm. There was power in death. 

Celila’s black eyes glittered, and the cave vanished. She was a slender 
carny clown again, tossing eggs beneath the hot midway lights. Stars 
were caught in her hair. Solemnly, she tossed the eggs to him, one, two, 
three. 

Reed caught them. She had offered, he had accepted. He threw his 
head back and tossed the eggs high into the air. What the hell! Drunk 
and exulting, he spun the fragile shells up and over, shaping a second 
hoop of pink-blue-green-yellow in the air. 

Power shivered in the air between them. 

“I believe.” He looked Celila in the eye, shaping the power with her, 
strong and careless as a god. “I believe in your magic,” he said. “And I 
want my revenge — now.” He felt light and joyous, hollow as an old bone 
with the wind whistling through it. You’re mine, Raymond, you poor son 
of a bitch! Celila laughed like silver bells, and Reed threw the eggs into 


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the sky, one after another. They disappeared, streaking across the sky 
like pastel comets. 

“Sherri, honey, I’ve had it. Let’s call it a day.” The voice was as clear 
as if someone had spoken in Reed’s ear. 

Raymond’s voice. The bustle of cotton-shirted backs and the sound of 
chanting camies solidified around Reed once more. He stood still, his 
skin twitching hot and cold and hot again. It was Raymond, dressed with 
his usual casual elegance, one arm around a golden-skinned woman in 
a white sundress. His hair was fluffed and sprayed to hide the thin spot, 
and he carried a plush, pink poodle under one arm. 

“I’ve seen enough animals for an ark,” Raymond was complaining in 
his mellow voice. “Let’s run back to the house and watch the stars.” The 
woman said something in a sweet, teasing voice, and Raymond laughed. 

Reed remembered that laugh. It was the one good old Ray always used 
to coax Reed into doing something for him. My God, what a fool he’d 
been! Reed’s skin was cold again, sizzling with energy, like Celila’s had 
been in the camper. He began to slide through the crowd, moving easily 
as a shark, his hands full of power. 

This is what it was all about. Celila was wrong to call it magic. Magic 
was tricks with handkerchiefs and flowers. This was something dark and 
powerful and very, very old. Reed smiled slowly. Not all the laws in the 
world can save you now, Raymond. This time, you’re going to pay. Ray- 
mond and his girlfriend were a long way ahead, walking toward the gate 
to the parking lot out behind the animal barns. No rush. They weren’t 
going to get away from him, not this time, not tonight. He sauntered. 

Reed caught up with them near the concrete pad of the wash rack, 
where farm kids scrubbed down their prize cattle. A big white bull was 
tied to the rack, chewing placidly. 

“Taking a little vacation, Raymond?” Reed’s voice was smooth as a 
steel knife blade. “Enjoying the thirty grand you took in trade for my 
life?” 

Raymond jerked around. “Reed? What are you doing here?” His face 
looked sallow in the yellow light. “You’ve got things all wrong,” he said 
nervously. The woman in the white sundress was looking from Raymond 
to Reed, frowning. She had a perfect figure and shoulder-length blonde 
hair. 

“I bet,” Reed said, and leered at the woman. “Did you buy her with the 
thirty grand?” he asked. “It’s time to pay up, Ray.” 

For a minute, Reed thought Raymond was going to bluff or yell for 
help, but instead, he dropped the woman’s arm and bolted. 

The ancient darkness stirred inside Reed and he lifted his hand lan- 
guidly. Too late, Raymond. He was powerful, and Raymond was nothing. 

The bull bellowed. 


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It sounded like a lion’s roar. The sounds of the fair faded as the creature 
snapped its lead rope with a casual toss of its huge head. It trotted away 
from the rack, and cut Raymond off neatly as he jogged toward the gate. 
The woman shrieked and ran, stumbling across the graveled lot toward 
the bam. Going for help? It wouldn’t matter. 

Reed smiled as the bull lowered its head in front of Raymond. The 
short, curved horns gleamed wickedly. Raymond made a wordless, gob- 
bling sound as he backed away. His back hit the chain-link fence that 
edged the fairgrounds, and he stood there, arms spread like a cheap 
crucifix. ^ 

My bull. My demon. Reed’s lips curved. The light and bustle had formed 
a distant blur of noise and light around them, as if Raymond, the bull, 
and Reed were all in the eye of an invisible hurricane. Revenge for an 
lOU. Reed laughed out loud, and the dark power moved in his belly. 

His laugh tilted the world, and suddenly, he was looking up at Ray- 
mond’s slack, frightened face. He laughed again, and it emerged as the 
breathy roar of an angry bull. Reed felt a rush of exultation, hot and 
pleasurable as orgasm. I am the bull, Raymond. He bellowed again. I 
am your death. 

He flexed his neck, felt muscles ripple and bunch. Power. Hot, animal 
power. It felt good. Delicately, he drew a single line in the dust with the 
tip of his horn. It gleamed like old bone, like Celila’s hands. Hot breath 
rushed in and out of his nostrils, and his haunches quivered. Raymond 
moaned, and broke from the fence in a stumbling rush. 

Reed let him run a few paces, then headed him off in a storm of 
thundering hooves. He herded Raymond casually, shaking his beautiful, 
deadly horns, teasing him, playing with him. He was in control this time. 
He was the cat, and poor, pitiful Raymond was the mouse. 

He was going to kill the mouse. 

Reed heard laughter like silver bells as his cloven hoofs pounded the 
ground. Strength rippled under his skin. Revenge. He savored it. Power. 

Raymond stumbled, slipped, and collapsed onto his hands and knees 
in the slick, black mud by the wash rack. Reed trotted lightly around to 
face him. Now, Raymond. He touched Raymond’s throat with one horn 
tip and their eyes locked. He willed Raymond to see him — good old Ray 
had to know. 

“Reed?” Eyes wide and mad, Raymond stared up at him. He was pant- 
ing, and sweat stuck his hair into tufts, exposing glossy scalp. “Please, 
Reed! I didn’t want to do it.” 

Yeah, sure. Delicately, Reed dug the horn in a little deeper. 

Raymond flinched, choked. “I was afraid,” he gasped out. “A coward. 
I couldn’t stand it — disgrace, newspaper stories . . . people whispering. 
Prison.” He was shaking, now. “I couldn’t take prison, and I knew they’d 


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be easier on an employee.” His face crumpled and he began to cry. “Please. 
Oh God, Reed, please don’t.” 

Reed twisted the horn a little, but rage was dissolving into slimy 
disgust. He tensed, fighting to hold onto his anger. Do it, he told himself 
fiercely. Don’t let the bastard con you. He used you, set you up for prison. 
He felt Celila’s cold, implacable stare. 

Do it. 

Celila wanted blood; he could feel her lust, rank and hot as the bull’s 
breath. Dip the horn tip, jab through the muscle over the belly, and toss 
your hrad so. In his mind, he knew how it would be. The skin and muscle 
would tear, spilling twisting ropes of purple and gray guts that would 
steam in the cooling evening air. Raymond would scream and bleed and 
die, like the pig on the altar. 

He deserved it. 

In the mud at his feet, Raymond whimpered and cowered. 

On the far side of the wash rack, Celila laughed like silver bells again, 
and it sounded like Raymond’s laugb. She had given him Raymond. 

Everything has a price, she had said. 

I didn’t ask what it was. Reed closed his eyes, and Celila’s white face 
blurred into Raymond’s twisted features against the screen of his eyelids. 

Raymond had wanted money. 

Celila wanted blood. 

“Wait,” Reed whispered. “Not again.” His thoughts tangled in confu- 
sion, and his head hurt. The ground tilted out from under him. 

He was on his hands and knees in the mud by the wash rack. Raymond 
stumbled toward him, muddy and terrified. Behind him trotted the bull. 
Celila tossed color in the shadows, her face like ice, and Raymond wasn’t 
going to make it. Reed scrambled to bis feet, bis head full of blood and 
steaming purple guts and the memory of bull muscles. 

The price? 

“Run, you idiot!” Reed grabbed Raymond’s outstretched arm, yanking 
him sideways at the last moment. The smooth white horn slid past Ray- 
mond’s back with an inch to spare. Clods of mud spattered Reed as the 
bull slewed around, and Reed slung Raymond toward a tractor parked 
near the fence. 

“Climb on it. Move!” Reed’s voice cracked and he shoved Raymond 
hard, nearly throwing the heavier man onto the safety of the tractor. 

The horn caught Reed as he scrambled after Raymond. The impact 
knocked him off his feet, and he hit the dry ground hard, rolling himself 
into a ball, flinching away from the deadly hooves. 

Miraculously, the bull leaped over him, and the hooves thudded away 
into the distance. Reed lay still, trying to breathe slowly and carefully, 
wondering if he was dying. Dying for Raymond. What a joke. His side 


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burned like fire, and he winced, his breath catching, as he moved his 
right arm. It didn’t feel like he was dying. You owe me, Raymond. Anger 
dulled the pain, and he struggled to his feet, clutching the thick tread 
of the tractor tire with his good hand. 

The bull had vanished, and so had Raymond. Reed stared around the 
dusty quadrangle, searching the thinning crowd. Raymond couldn’t have 
made it to the barn. Raymond couldn’t have been here in the first place, 
at a two-bit county fair in the middle of nowhere! Reed began to laugh, 
softly. 

Celila walked lightly toward him, tossing colored eggs casually in one 
hand. 

Reed wiped his muddy palm on his pants and leaned against the tractor. 
“Was he real?” His knees wanted to shake. “Was Raymond real?” 

“Yes.” The bright, black eyes regarded him. “And no. It was your 
choice.” t 

“My choice?” He winced as she reached out and unbuttoned his shirt 
with her white fingers. “He would have been real if I’d killed him, 
wouldn’t he?” And then what? 

They were gathering at the edge of the quadrangle — the carny folk. 
He caught a glimpse of the moon-faced woman and the skinny kid. They 
were looking at him, watching him with hungry faces. 

He shivered and looked down at his bare chest. The bull’s horn had 
plowed a long, shallow graze across his ribs. Not bad, but it hurt. Blood 
welled out of the shallow trough and Celila ran her cupped hand along 
the gash. Her fingers were cold as ice, and the blood pooled in her palm, 
thick and shiny as mercury. She smiled at him and lifted her hand to 
her lips. Slowly, she licked her fingers. 

Reed stared at her, sick and numb. “Who are you?” he whispered. 
“What are you?” 

“I am everything,” she said. “Beginning, middle, and end.” Her voice 
was the creaking mumble of an old, old woman and her eyes were black 
pebbles. “Mother, maiden, and crone.” 

She was old . . . she was old. Reed had to look away from those black 
pebble eyes. He buttoned his shirt again, fumbling one-handed with the 
buttons. The gash had stopped bleeding and the skin felt numb and stiff 
where she had touched it. He turned away from her, stumbling down the 
midway to the main gate, shoving his way through the sluggish crowd. 

Celila walked beside him, and, one by one, the carny people fell in 
behind, trailing them through the emptying fairground. Reed’s shoulders 
kept wanting to hunch, and the walk to the main gate was a hundred 
miles long. 

All around him, the fair lived and moved, a kaleidoscope of light and 

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color and humanity. Belief scented the air, and he could feel the power 
there, bright and beautiful, dark and ugly, tainted with old, dark blood. 

What happened to the old gods who demanded blood and fear? Who 
sacrificed for them, now? 

He walked faster. 

The bored security guard at the gate barely glanced at him. Tired 
families stumbled past, trailing a wake of crumpled paper cups, cotton 
candy cones, and com-dog sticks. Celila stopped just inside the gate. Reed 
walked a step or two beyond, and then turned to face her. He could see 
the asphalt highway at the end of the long gravel driveway. 

This is where I started, he thought. He stared at the black lanes. The 
asphalt looked wet in the glare of headlights and it was about two million 
miles to the city, even if a cop didn’t pick him up. A hell of a long way. 
I could call my lawyer — ask him what it’ll cost me if I turn myself in. 
A year in prison, if he was lucky? Two, or three, or five, if he wasn’t. 

He felt very, very tired. Color and light tugged at him, tugging him 
back toward the carnival. Power. He remembered the hot, sweet feel of 
it. 

“You wanted me to kill Raymond,” he said. “It was a trick.” 

That wasn’t quite true. Reed had wanted to kill Raymond, too. Some- 
where, deep down, he still wanted to kill him. 

“You can still choose.” Celila lifted a bone-white hand, and, behind 
her, the carny folk murmured. “The power will belong to you and you 
will belong to the power,” she said. “Forever.” 

The chilly breeze flicked her bangs and swayed her slim, sexless body. 
Sixteen? Twenty-five? The eyes in her smooth face were holes into a 
darkness that made Reed think of tombs, of ancient dust, of pyramids. 
Old. Ancient. He shivered, thinking of old stones and thick red blood . . . and 
sacrifice. 

Gods need worshippers. 

“What did you get for your price?” Reed raised his voice, shouted at 
the little knot of shadowy figures inside the gate. The security guard at 
the gate glanced at him warily, but no one answered. 

Celila’s ancient eyes looked into him and through him. “You’ll spend 
three years in prison,” she said. “They will not be pleasant.” She reached 
for his hand, and slipped something round and hard onto his palm. 

An egg, Reed stared at the fragile, blue shell. He could feel the chick 
inside, fluttering and peeping faintly. 

Prison. Three years in prison. And after? What then? Just more ass- 
holes, pushing him around, for the rest of his life. A loser’s life. Celila 
stood just inside the fairground gate, not one inch of her body beyond 
the chainlink boundary. 

She had offered him forever. 


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Reed stared at the egg on his palm. It was hot, so hot it nearly burned 
his hand. Toss it into the air, he thought. Take the power in both hands 
and accept it. Don’t let the assholes win. The carny folk clustered behind 
her, and their hungry eyes burned like cold flames. 

There are prisons and prisons. 

The ancient, tomb eyes waited with the patience of a stone. The power 
belongs to you and you belong to the power. Light and color and eternity 
waited for him on the midway. 

The chick peeped faintly inside its shell. 

Very, very gently, Reed cracked the shell and the wet, blue chick 
scrabbled in his palm, its down drying slowly in the night breeze. Celila 
watched it without speaking. Reed searched her face, looking for anger 
or hope or disappointment, but the pale features might as well have been 
a fine porcelain mask. 

“No,” he said. He put the chick gently down onto the dusty ground, 
and straightened stiffly. “Fm tired of paying someone else’s price,” he 
said, to the unblinking stone eyes. 

He turned his back. The chick’s shrill peeping followed him as he 
walked back out to the highway. 

This time, he’d try paying his own. # 


NEAT STUFF 

(Continued from page 16} 

original script. Volk wrote T/ie 
Kiss and Ken Russell’s Gothic. “This 
is a realistic film about inexplica- 
ble things,” Friedkin said. “I’d call 
it a suspense horror film along the 
lines of a Brothers Grimm story 
. . . but with a realistic founda- 
tion.” 

The director’s first hit. The French 
Connection (1971), won the Acad- 
emy Award for Best Picture. And 
his most recent film was the stylish 
crime thriller. To Live and Die in 
LA. (1985). But he is a self-pro- 
claimed admirer of classic horror 


films like Rosemary’s Baby and 
Alien. 

And though there are plenty of 
special effects in The Guardian, 
Friedkin sees this as a film about 
characters that we believe in. “What 
I liked about the original script of 
this film is that it dealt with a basic 
primal fear by centering on a fam- 
ily and what happens when that is 
threatened.” 

It was producer Joe Wizan who 
approached the director with Volk’s 
original script last year. “What 
Billy Friedkin has here is a story 
that is ultimately about who you 
entrust your children to.” 

(Continued on page 117) 

63 


FOR A PRICE 





A number of projects have consumed 
Lewis Shiner's attention since we last 
published one of his tales ("Six Flags 
Over Jesus," which was written 
in collaboration with his 
wife, Edith Shiner, and appeared 
in our November 1987 issue). 

He’s written stories for Joe Lonsdale's 
anthology Razored Saddles, Ellen 
Datlow’s Alien Sex anthology, and 
Bantam Books’ Wild Cards series. He 
has co-authored an eight-issue limited 
series tor DC Comics called Time 
Masters, and he’s written Slam, a 
skateboarding novel that will be 
published by Doubleday in July. Mr. 
Shiner has also managed to find the 
time to edit a Greenpeace benefit 
anthology. When the Music's Over, that 
Bantam will release some time this year. 



Tesla lifts the piece of sirloin to his lips. Its volume is approximately 
.25 cubic inches, or .02777 of the entire steak. As he chews, he notices 
a waterspot on the back of his fork. He takes a fresh napkin from the 
stack at his left elbow and scrubs the fork vigorously. 

He is sitting at a private table in the refreshment stand at the West 
end of the Court of Honor. He looks out onto the Chicago World’s Fair 
and Columbian Exposition. It is October of 1893. The sun is long gone 
and the reflections of Tesla’s electric lights sparkle on the surface of the 
Main Basin, turning the spray from the fountain into glittering jewels. 
At the far end of the Basin stands the olive-wreathed Statue of the 
Republic in flowing robes. On all sides the White City lies in pristine 
elegance, testimony to the glorious architecture of ancient Greece and 
Rome. Its chilly streets are populated by mustached men in topcoats and 
sturdy women in woolen shawls. 

The time is 9:45. At midnight Nikola Tesla will produce his greatest 
miracle. The number twelve seems auspicious. It is important to him, 
for reasons he cannot understand, that it is divisible by three. 

Anne Morgan, daughter of financier J. Pierpont Morgan, stands at a 
little distance from his table. Though still in finishing school she is tall, 
self-possessed, strikingly attractive. She is reluctant to disturb Tesla, 
knowing he prefers to dine alone. Still she is drawn to him irresistibly. 
He is rake thin and handsome as the devil himself, with steel gray eyes 
that piece through to her soul. 

“Mr. Tesla,” she says, “I pray I am not disturbing you.” 

Tesla looks up, smiles gently. “Miss Morgan.” He begins to rise. 

“Please, do not get up. I was merely afraid I would miss you. I had 
hoped we might walk together after you finished here.” 

“I would be delighted.” 

“I shall await you there, by the Basin.” 

She withdraws. Trailing a gloved hand along the balustrade, she tries 
to avoid the drunken crowds which swarm the Exposition Grounds. To- 
morrow the Fair will close and pass into history. Already there are 
arguments as to what is to become of these splendid buildings. There is 
neither money to maintain them nor desire to demolish them. Chicago’s 
Mayor, Carter Harrison, worries that they will end up filthy and van- 
dalized, providing shelter for the hundreds of poor who will no longer 
have jobs when the Fair ends. 

Her thoughts turn back to Tesla. She finds herself inordinately taken 
with him. At least part of the attraction is the mystery of his personal 
life. At age thirty-seven he has never married nor been engaged. She 
has heard rumors that his tastes might be, to put it delicately, Greek in 
nature. There is no evidence to support this gossip and she does not credit 


WHITE CITY 


65 



it. Rather it seems likely that no one has yet been willing to indulge the 
inventor’s many idiosyncrasies. 

She absently touches her bare left earlobe. She no longer wears the 
pearl earrings that so offended him on their first meeting. She flushes 
at the memory, and at that point Tesla appears. 

“Shall we walk?” he asks. 

She nods and matches his stride, careful not to take his arm. Tesla is 
not comfortable with personal contact. 

To their left is the Hall of Agriculture. She has heard that its most 
popular attraction is an eleven-ton cheese from Ontario. Like so many 
other visitors to the Fair, she has not actually visited any of the exhibits. 
They seem pedestrian compared to the purity and classical lines of the 
buildings which house them. The fragrance of fresh roses drifts out 
through the open doors, and for a moment she is lost in a reverie of her 
native New York in the spring. 

As they pass the end of the hall they are in darkness for a few moments. 
Tesla seems to shudder. He has been silent and intent, as if compulsively 
counting his steps. It would not surprise her if this were actually the 
case. 

“Is anything wrong?” she asks. 

“No,” Tesla says. “It’s nothing.” 

In fact the darkness is full of lurking nightmares for Tesla. Just now 
he was five years old again, watching his older brother Daniel fall to his 
death. Years of guilty self-examination have not made the scene clearer. 
They stood together at the top of the cellar stairs, and then Daniel fell 
into the darkness. Did he fall? Did Nikola, in a moment of childish rage, 
push him? 

All his life he has feared the dark. His father took his candles away, 
so little Nikola made his own. Now the full-grown Tesla has brought 
electric light to the White City, carried by safe, inexpensive alternating 
current. It is only the beginning. 

They round the East end of the Court of Honor. At the Music Hall, the 
Imperial Band of Austria plays melodies from Wagner. Anne Morgan 
shivers in the evening chill. “Look at the moon,” she says. “Isn’t it ro- 
mantic?” 

Tesla’s smile seems condescending. “I have never understood the ro- 
mantic impulse. We humans are meat machines, and nothing more.” 

“That is hardly a pleasant image.” 

“I do not mean to be offensive, only accurate. That is the aim of science, 
after all.” 

“Yes, of course,” Anne Morgan says. “Science.” There seems no way 
to reach him, no chink in his cool exterior. This is where the others gave 
up, she thinks. I will prove stronger than all of them. In her short. 


66 


LEWIS SHINER 



privileged existence, she has always obtained what she wants. “I wish 
I knew more about it.” 

“Science is a pure, white light,” Tesla says. “It shines evenly on all 
things, and reveals their particular truths. It banishes uncertainty, and 
opinion, and contradiction. Through it we master the world.” 

They have circled back to the West, and to their right is the Liberal 
Arts Building. She has heard that it contains so much painting and 
sculpture that one can only wander helplessly through it. To attempt to 
seek out a single artist, or to look for the French Impressionists, of whom 
she has been hearing so much, would be sheer futility. 

Under Tesla’s electric lights, the polished facade of the building spar- 
kles. For a moment, looking down the impossibly long line of perfect 
Corinthian columns, she feels what Tesla feels: the triumph of man over 
nature, the will to conquer and shape and control. Then the night breeze 
brings her the scent of roses from across the Basin and the feeling passes. 

They enter the Electricity Building together and stand in the center, 
underneath the great dome. This is the site of the Westinghouse exhibit, 
a huge curtained archway resting upon a metal platform. Beyond the 
arch are two huge Tesla coils, the largest ever built. At the peak of the 
arch is a tablet inscribed with the words: WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC 
& MANUFACTURING CO. /TESLA POLYPHASE SYSTEM. 

Tesla’s mood is triumphant. Edison, his chief rival, has been proven 
wrong. Alternating current will be the choice of the future. The West- 
inghouse Company has this week been awarded the contract to build the 
first two generators at Niagara Falls. Tesla cannot forgive Edison’s hir- 
ing of Menlo Park street urchins to kidnap pets, which he then electro- 
cuted with alternating current — “Westinghoused” them, as he called it. 
But Edison’s petty, lunatic attempts to discredit the polyphase system 
have failed, and he stands revealed as an old, bitter, and unimaginative 
man. 

Edison has lost, and history will soon forget him. 

George Westinghouse himself, Tesla’s patron, is here tonight. So are 
J.P. Morgan, Anne’s father, and William K. Vanderbilt and Mayor Har- 
rison. Here also are Tesla’s friends Robert and Katherine Johnson, and 
Samuel Clemens, who insists everyone call him by his pen name. 

It is nearly midnight. 

Tesla steps lightly onto the platform. He snaps his fingers and gas- 
filled tubes burst into pure white light. Tesla has fashioned them to spell 
out the names of several of the celebrities present, as well as the names 
of his favorite Serbian poets. He holds up his hands to the awed and 
expectant crowd. “Gentlemen and Ladies. I have no wish to bore you 


WHITE CITY 


67 



with speeches. I have asked you here to witness a demonstration of the 
power of electricity.” 

He continues to talk, his voice rising to a high pitch in his excitement. 
He produces several wireless lamps and places them around the stage. 
He points out that their illumination is undiminished, despite their dis- 
tance from the broadcast power source. “Note how the gas at low pressure 
exhibits extremely high conductivity. This gas is little different from 
that in the upper reaches of our atmosphere.” 

He concludes with a few fireballs and pinwheels of light. As the ap- 
plause gradually subsides he holds up his hands once again. “These are 
little more than parlor tricks. Tonight I wish to say thank you, in a 
dramatic and visible way, to all of you who have supported me through 
your patronage, through your kindness, through your friendship. This 
is my gift to you, and to all of mankind.” 

He opens a panel in the front of the arch. A massive knife switch is 
revealed. Tesla makes a short bow and then throws the switch. 

The air crackles with ozone. Electricity roars through Tesla’s body. 
His hair stands on end and flames dance at the tips of his fingers. Elec- 
tricity is his God, his best friend, his only lover. It is clean, pure, absolute. 
It arcs through him and invisibly into the sky. Tesla alone can see it. To 
him it is blinding white, the color he sees when inspiration, fear, or 
elation strikes him. 

The coils draw colossal amounts of power. All across the great hall, all 
over the White City, lights flicker and dim. Anne Morgan cries out in 
shock and fear. 

Through the vaulted windows overhead the sky itself begins to glow. 

Something sparks and hisses and the machine winds down. The air 
reeks of melted copper and glass and rubber. It makes no difference. The 
miracle is complete. 

Tesla steps down from the platform. His friends edge away from him, 
involuntarily. Tesla smiles like a wise father. “If you will follow me, I 
will show you what man has wrought.” 

Already there are screams from outside. Tesla walks quickly to the 
doors and throws them open. 

Anne Morgan is one of the first to follow him out. She cannot help but 
fear him, despite her attraction, despite all her best intentions. All 
around her she sees fairgoers with their necks craned upward, or their 
eyes hidden in fear. She turns her own gaze to the heavens and lets out 
a short, startled cry. 

The sky is on fire. Or rather, it burns the way the filaments burn in 
one of Tesla’s electric lamps. It has become a sheet of glowing white. 
After a few seconds the glare hurts her eyes and she must look away. 

It is midnight, and the Court of Honor is lit as if by the noonday sun. 


68 


LEWIS SHINER 



She is close enough to hear Tesla speak a single, whispered word: “Mag- 
nificent.” 

Westinghouse comes forward nervously. “This is quite spectacular,” 
he says, “but hadn’t you best, er, turn it off?” 

Tesla shakes his head. Pride shines from his face. “You do not seem 
to understand. The atmosphere itself, some 35,000 feet up, has become 
an electrical conductor. I call it my ‘terrestrial night light.’ The charge 
is permanent. I have banished night from the world for all time.” 

“For all time?” Westinghouse stammers. 

Anne Morgan slumps against a column, feels the cold marble against 
her back. Night, banished? The stars, gone forever? “You’re mad,” she 
says to Tesla. “What have you done?” 

Tesla turns away. The reaction is not what he expected. Where is their 
gratitude? He has turned their entire world into a White City, a city in 
which crime and fear and nightmares are no longer possible. Yet men 
point at him, shouting curses, and women weep openly. 

He pushes past them, toward the train station. Meat machines, he 
thinks. They are so used to their inefficient cycles of night and day. But 
they will learn. 

He boards a train for New York and secures a private compartment. 
As he drives on into the white night, his window remains brilliantly 
lighted. 

In the light there is truth. In the light there is peace. In the light he 
will be able, at last, to sleep. # 



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WHITE CITY 


69 





v>:?^ 






Night . . . and not plenilune, either, you can bet your boots. Limekiller 
has no boots, he has, though, a shovel. Limekiller feels that if he eats 
another pannikin of rice and beans or of the thin chowder called fish-tea 
that he . . . that he. . . . What he is after, he is after turtle-eggs, so sig- 
nificant a source of insult in the rich, rich Chinese culture, largely rep- 
resented in British Hidalgo by the canny and philoprogenitive merchant 
Aurelio Aung and about 327 of his descendants. Better be exceedingly 
careful in talking about turtles to the Aung. More better say as little as 
possible about eggs at all to any of them. To ask, even to ask, “Don 
Aurelio, do you think it’s going to rain?” would bring conversation to a 


LIMEKILLER 
AT LARGE 

by Avram Davidson 


Here is the tale of a curious 
happening upon the shore of 
distant British Hidalgo ... 

art: George Thompson 



sudden and deathly-still halt. As for that sole man ever known to have 
placed his hand on the ancient and naked head of old Aurelio Aung (for 
what reason, knows only God), death did not exactly come on swift wings, 
but it is certain that Aurelio Aung III felled him with a kick he had 
learned before kung fu became well-known in the regions of the dark 
west, and that Aurelio Aung, Jr. had assisted III to propel the man down 
a flight of steps at the bottoms of which a throng or tong of unnumbered 
Aung were waiting to and did kick him with many sharp kicks of their 
sharp-pointed shoes (they being fashionable, and Old Aung had imported 
them and sold them in considerable numbers) before P.C. Oscar Spencer 
C. Featherstonehaugh Smith, then on duty, had finished strolling over 
quite leisurely. It may not have been a capital offense “to kill a Chin- 
aman” in Pecos, Texas during the incumbency of Judge Roy Bean; but 
it was quite a serious offense to insult Aurelio Aung in King Town, the 
ancient and moldering capital — as the man commonly called Bloody 
Whoop-whoop, a citizen of a Commonwealth Country {not, thank God, 
Canada!) soon found out. For not only was he subsequently refused serv- 
ice at hotels, bars, and brothels, but within no less than eighty-seven 
hours had been declared an Inadmissible Person (“in that he did disturb 
the peace of Her Majesty’s Realm in British Hidalgo in a state of drun- 
kenness by shouting ‘Delete the Queen and all those other damn Dutch 
delete,’ and did assault one Aurelio Aung Senior a loyal subject of Her 
Majesty,” etc. etc. for several other charges: of which others he had indeed 
been guilty but otherwise nothing more than a tolerant smile would have 
come of them); and was propelled by the pink palms of no less than three 
police sergeants across the Spanish-speaking border of a neighboring 
Republic. Which was the end of that. Though the pelicans and the hedge- 
hogs may have picked his bones, and the satyrs danced upon them; serve 
him right. 

For, over the course of many, many years, as John Lutwidge (Jack) 
Limekiller had learned, as follows: the turtle, having a shell cannot 
copulate with other turtles and hence has conjugal union with a snake 
and is therefore (the turtle) written with the Chinese character meaning 
Forgets Filial Piety; by touching with one’s palm the shell of the turtle 
one can tell if it is going to rain or not (Jack did not learn exactly how, 
and very much forebore to ask): therefore to imply that some one is a 
turtle or a turtle’s egg is to insinuate several ugly matrimonial skeletons 
in some one’s family closet ... or sandalwood chest. Oh dear. 

And as for the flexible yet muscular neck-and-head of the turtle, ex- 
tendable and retractable, references to and comparison with any par- 
ticular member peculiar to the male anatomy are surely so obvious that 
only a turtle— But enough. The Aung family was clever. It was cognitive. 
It was commercial. It would do business in almost anything from gal- 


72 


AVRAM DAVIDSON 



banum to guppies. But it would not do business with turtles. And it 
would certainly not do business with turtles’ eggs. Indeed as a general 
thing it would not admit knowing that turtles had eggs. 

This left the local turtle-egg-hunting field narrowed down to only the 
Bayfolk, the Black Arawack, the White Creoles, and the Brown Panyars. 
All of whom admired the Aung family tremendously. 

But did not share their prejudices. 

At all. 

But Smith-Piggott cared for none of these things. 

Augustus Smith-Piggott, Permanent Undersecretary to Government, 
was a fixture. Legislatures, Governors, Cabinet Ministers, came and 
went: Smith-Piggott alone remained. His laccolithic face was in itself a 
monument to Empire; indeed, he was a one-man proverb all in his own 
right, to wit, “You no say 'No’ to Smeet-Peegott!’ ” And on the day when 
he had decided that the turtles of the deeps (and perhaps even the shal- 
lows) might be endangered, the fate of legal hunting of their eggs was 
sealed. 

Suppose that you were a young man, of full age, and although in very 
good health, felt that you had admired the Canadian snowscape fully as 
much as Kipling had, and now desired to copy Kipling in another manner, 
and survey the wanner souths: you, too (provided that your passport was 
in good order and that you were not on one of those Wanted for Extradition 
information sheets which circulate, sunset or not, throughout what used 
to be the British Empire): you might also have found yourself considering 
coconuts in place of maple leaves; Dr. Benjamin Jowett (My name it is 
Benjamin Jowett! Whatever is knowledge I know it! I’m the Provost of 
Trinity College! And what I do not know is not knowledge.) , in a bit of 
a snit, had once observed that there were more sun-worshippers than 
Anglicans in Her Majesty’s dominions; and perhaps there still are. 

All of which is beside the point at issue or where is it at, the point 
being (a) that Limekiller was hungry, and that it was Inhibited “to trap, 
dredge, catch, dig, trench, or otherwise secure the eggs of the great sea- 
turtle, the lesser-sea-turtle, the green or the hawksbill turtle, or any 
other turtle, tortoise, hiccatee, or bocatura whatsoever from any point 
upon or within one league of the seacoast of Her Majesty’s Colony of 
British Hidalgo during such months which may be gazetted for purposes 
of said Inhibitions and all persons who may contravene such inhibitions 
shall be given into custody ... to serve at hard labour at Her Majesty’s 
pleasure for not more than one year and one day, etc.” — it being damned 
well-understood in common-law and chancery that you might, if the 


LIMEKILLER AT LARGE 


73 



Crown wanted it, serve every single day of such sentence for every single 
egg they caught you with. 

Limekiller was very hungry? 

He was. 

Otherwise catch him at the wane of the moon with very little light 
save that supplied by the phosphorescent wash of the waves and the 
great and glittering stars clad only in shirt and britches (it was his bad 
shirt, too, for his good one had been just washed and hung drying from 
some ratlines or something on his boat Sacarissa) and with a shovel. 
Limekiller did indeed appreciate the need for keeping the sea-turtle or 
whatever was its particular name (Sadie? Lou? Jane?) from being egg- 
hunted to extinction; he also appreciated that its newly-surfaced hatch- 
lings en route to the Stream of Ocean (just open Homer at random. . . . 
“Agamemnon shook his great purple cloak and with a great cry [or, 
loudly breaking wind], spake these winged words, ‘Out upon thee, thou 
caitiff dog, and get thee gone from the camps of the well-greaved Ae- 
chaeans [or, pos. the Greeks with swollen legs], ne’er taking breath till 
thou reach the Stream of Ocean, and take care thou offend not the Turtle- 
eaters dwelling thereby, whom Apollo and Poseidon delight twice a year 
to visit. . . .’ ” See?) the newly-hatched and tiny turtles on route from 
their nests to the water were swooped down upon and eaten by predators 
innumerable, and he hoped that the dozen or so eggs he might take never 
would be missed; though perhaps in all this he was Wrong. And if he 
were asked why, nevertheless, he was doing so, he might answer, as did 
a well-known vegetarian found eating a steak, “I was hungry.” 

Aurelio Aung y compania might extend credit once, he/they might 
(though less likely) extend credit twice, but after that appeals for credit 
would only send him/them back to the abacus. Hence see Limekiller, his 
boat moored up a creek by the mangroves brown, pacing the beach 
undercover of night. And what would George II have thought about itall? 

Neither history nor poetry had been very kind to George III. One poet 
has perhaps summed it up: 

George Third 

Ought never to have occurred. 

Such a blunder 

Makes one wonder. 

Deft, no? Eh? 

Of George I, we retain dull memories that he, not being able to speak 
English, thus became the first British Sovereign not to attend cabinet 
meetings, to the great advantage of Constitutional Government. But of 
George II — well, what of George II? The answer must only be: nothing. 
Nothing much in England, nothing good in Scotland, nothing much good 


74 


AVRAM DAVIDSON 



in Ireland, and certainly nothing at all in British Columbia. But in 
British Hidalgo: a great deal more than nothing: for when it came to the 
second Gleorge’s attention that the Spanish Viceroy of Mexico or perhaps 
Peru (history is a little blurry as to this) was caught out in sketching 
plans to invade the sea-coast of British Hidalgo (which was, in those 
days, almost all sea-coast), did not Gleorge II declare that, if this were 
done, “He vould, py (Jot, pompard der coasts of Shpain!”? This has been 
forgotten in Britain (it has probably been forgotten in Spain, both nations 
having had very long and very bad headaches from their respective and 
very disrespectful empires); it has never been forgotten in British Hi- 
dalgo; “the Spaniard” — as he is always called, collectively — having fore- 
home to make the planned invasion. 

To this day, in fact, in Woodcutters Cove, that forgotten last refuge of 
the White Creoles, there is still a statue of this bristly little monarch. 
True, it is only half life-size, and the sculptor has pictured him wearing 
the armor and tunic of a Roman general, with the result that there is 
a subversive school of thought which maintains stubbornly that it is a 
statue of Queen Victoria in corset and petticoat. But that is neither here 
nor there; and, alas, increasingly, that is where one nowadays mostly 
finds the White Creoles of the Colony, to wit: neither here nor there . . . the 
principal exception being, of course. Woodcutters Cove. Darker and more 
vigorous races have in large part taken over, elsewhere. The children of 
Asia (of both ends and of the middle) run most of the shops. The civil 
service and police constabulary are mostly Bayfolk (which is to say, 
mostly Black or Tan). Most of the farming around there is done by Pan- 
yars, as the entirely Mestizo population is called. The Black Arawacks, 
who are culturally Amerindian, do most of the fishing. What then do the 
White Creoles do? They do what log-cutting is still being done therea- 
bouts. Aniline dyes have swept away the demand for logwood, and the 
mahogany has long been exhausted. But when baulks of rosewood and 
spars of pine or Santa Maria, logs of serricoty, or emmory, are cut, it is 
the White Creoles who cut it. And when not doing that, they sit upon 
their verandahs, drinking mm and watered lime-juice, and they murmur 
of Good King (Jeorge’s Golden Days . . . that Good King being, of course, 
George II. 

“ Tired of fish-tea and rice-and-beans’?” Ruddy — for Rudderick — Goforth 
repeated, as one should repeat, “ Tired of life?’ ” 

“Pretty tired ofm, yes,” Limekiller agreed. He sipped from the bottom 
of his glass. There hadn’t been much rum to start with and it had been 
of low proof: but the lime-tree after all grew in the front yard, and even 
if one didn’t know much else, one knew that lime-juice kept away the 
dreaded scurvy. There was, this time, a different and a more bitter taste 
in the glass, but no mystery was involved . . . and neither was Angos- 


LIMEKILLER AT LARGE 


75 



tura . . . idly he picked up the piece of paper which Ruddy had copied, 
he said, from an old book, and read once more the careful capitals. 

A Sovran Cure for The Small Feaver. Take one small bottle of 
white Rum called by Spaniard a chaparita and lay therein 
three twigs of the Verb Contribo and lett it steep for three Dayes. 
Drink 1 oz. morning and one ozz Evening for 3 dayes and Y‘ 
maye see F' Feaver abate. Cauton [sic] do not use same Twiggs 
more than thrice. 

It was an old “old book.” Ruddy asked how “Jock” was feeling. “Jock” 
shrugged. “I guess the fever’s gone down,” he said. “It wasn’t much of 
a fever anyway.” 

Ruddy covered his long chin with his long hand, and took thought. 
“Well ... if the fever has gone down . . . and you still hasn’t got no ap- 
petite — ” 

“Didn’t say that I have no appetite. Said that I have no appetite for 
fish-tea and rice-and-beans.” 

Goforth looked upward, as though an information might be lodged on 
the ridge-pole of his house. From the outside, nothing looked trashier 
than the thatched roof of a “trash house,” at once shaggy and so soon 
shabby: from the inside, nothing looked more beautiful and more sym- 
metrical: compensation, this was called. John L. Limekiller could not see 
it, but evidently Rod. Goforth could, and — having found the informa- 
tion — took his hand away from his chin and slowly opened his mouth. 
Also in the yard were the purple-drooping jacaranda trees. The book said 
its flowers were blue . . . blue! . . . but any fool could see they were pur- 
ple. 

Almost as though determined to exhibit a prime feature of the classical 
old White Creole accent, R. Goforth said, “Vhat you vants to do is to 
elewate your wittles.” He gave a great nod. 

“ ‘Elevate my — ’ ” 

“Get you a tin of cam-beef. Get you a tin of peas-with-salad-cream.” 
He almost smacked his lips as he named these imported delicacies, and 
sounded rather like a physician of the previous century recommending 
a couple of dozen oysters, some canvasback duck, and a pint of cham- 
pagne. 

His guest sighed. “What I’d like to get me is some back-bacon and a 
couple of eggs. But when I mentioned write-it-down to Domingo Aung,” 
the entire Aung extended family, to which Aurelio was Titular Uncle, 
maintained the tradition of Spanish-language given-names perhaps dat- 
ing back to days when kings named Alfonso reigned over Manila as well 
as Malaga; “to Domingo Aung, he suddenly got very hard of hearing.” 

R. Goforth signified by a sort of rictus that well he knew the occasional 
auricular difficulty of Aurelio Aung and Clan. Then, “I tells you vhat,” 

76 AVRAM DAVIDSON 



said he. “You vants to picquet the heach at night, and get you a few 
tortle eggs; bock-bacon, forget about it until you gets rich again.” 

And he told Jack this, and he told Jack that, and he told Jack a few 
other things; also he told Jack this: “Ond in case they should apprehend 
you, vhich I wery much doubts, as po-licemen doesn’t vant to poke around 
such places at night unless eat ease really big-time, but suppose they 
should: here is vhat you remember: stout denial. You does understand 
that? Neh-wer confess! E-wen if ah dead body lie before you, 
stout . . . denial! Maybe it fool you, get up and valk avay, maybe some- 
body help it valk. . . . The Lah of Ewwidence is ah chancy thing. This 
is a British country — this is not a Frinch country — not a Spaniard coun- 
try — the police gots to produce ewwidence you are guilty. So — ” 

“ ‘Stout . . . denial.’ ” 

"Stout . . . denial.” 

Likely, (Limekiller was thinking, waiting on the log just above high- 
water mark) likely if his lovely lady, Felix, was hereabouts he would 
have found something better to do of nights. Also, Felix (nee Felicia) 
would have spurred him on to borrow a shotgun and go hunting gibnut, 
or maybe even armadillo . . . wild-/iog . . . antetope (very well: it was 
really a small dear, it ate well, didn’t it). . . . But Felix and her cousin 
May were in King Town, getting their residence permits renewed, shop- 
ping for piece goods and native arts and crafts, getting books out of the 
National Library: officially, f/nofficially: also going to parties and to 
events very generally called funs. Maybe he. Jack, did not altogether 
like this last notion, for who knows whom Felix might meet'? But he did 
not own her, nor her gleaming copper-red hair, nor her lovely long body; 
and he could not control her goings or her doings. So. . . . 

Here he was, and what was that, barely he could see it but he could 
see it, its back breaking the surface of the water (not the surf, no, there 
was no surf to speak of within the reef-protected waters of the Great Bay 
of Hidalgo: the water). . . ? Sure enough, as it came nearer and nearer, 
only a turtle would be homing in to land amid the shallows. The creature 
seemed to give no heed to possible danger, it hesitated not for a single 
moment, on it came, in it came, up it came, it dragged its large body up 
upon the beach and, propelling its bulk across the sands, crawled and 
crawled and . . . then it stopped. Began to dig. Kept on digging. 

He could not only see the sand it was excavating with its hind flippers, 
he could hear it falling back down; he could also hear . . . and had been 
hearing . . . faint sounds of music from Woodcutters Cove Town . . . prin- 
cipally the faint sounds of the juke-boxes in the various “liquor booths,” 
not indeed of Creole or Bayfolk music, for those traditions were alas 
dying: of the recorded popular music of the United States, of Jamaica. . . . 


LIMEKILLER AT LARGE 


77 



And also, or instead, as the soft wind shifted, as the rock and reggae 
paused long enough sometimes for the records to be changed, he heard 
something else, heard a music quite different: it was, must be, could only 
be, the sound of Mrs. Standish playing her spinnet. It was of course softer 
than the sounds of the clamorous juke-boxes, but it was also nearer. 
Almost an axiom: the tropics are not kind to stringed instruments. No, 
and perhaps the tropics were not particularly kind to Mrs. Standish, 
either; she was the wife of the Anglican minister, Limekiller had not 
officially met her, but he had more than once seen her, an aging woman 
with a loosening face and figure. Mister Standish had a Dedicated coun- 
tenance and it grew more Dedicated with the passing of time; Mrs. Stan- 
dish’s face merely grew older. 

The sand flashed, the sand fell. Why should the sand flash? Was that 
only the sand he was hearing? Did sand clash and ring? He did not want 
to disturb the great sea-she-turtle, assuming it to be disturbable, but he 
was moved to arise and to get him, so softly as he could, adown the night- 
time sands. The turtle showed no signs of alarm — of, even, awareness: 
slowly he drew near. Surely . . . surely not! 

I walked along the evening sea 

And dreamed a dream which could not be. 

The evening waves, breaking on the shore. 

Said only. Dreamer, dream no more. 

Where was that from? Who cared. He stooped. His hands moved in the 
heap of cast-up sand. His fingers clutched a something, and he drew it 
out. He drew out a few more. Deliberating himself be calm, he took his 
shirt off and spread it on the beach a few feet away from the constantly- 
increasing heaps of sand, and, finding no stone, anchored it first with a 
chunk of coconut shell. Then he could contain himself no longer; into the 
wood which fringed the beach he went, crouched, carefully considered 
the matter of direction, struck a match. Looked. Was Charles II indeed 
King of France as well as of England, Scotland, Ireland? Probably not, 
probably it was not even an idle boast but merely a habit, a reflex, to 
describe him as such. No King of England if not King of France . . . ? — but 
that was long before. The mosquitoes, no longer kept even somewhat at 
bay by the sea-breezes, fiercely sounded their shrill sounds and attacked: 
let them. He held in his hand, John Lutwidge Limekiller, a coin of twenty- 
one shillings and minted (presumably) from gold mined in the great 
Kingdom of Guinea; he had little idea — he had none! — what the current 
value of such a coin might be, but he knew that it had to be more than 
twenty-one shillings — twenty-one pounds would not value it enough! 

Money! Money! Here he had had scarcely enough to eat, and now he 
would be rich! for, although he had as yet no way of knowing how many 
golden guineas there were ... let alone where they had come from . . . some 


78 


AVRAM DAVIDSON 



foundered ship whose timbers perhaps broken on the reef, yet had (per- 
haps) managed to get inside that same before sinking altogether and 
before the officers or crew were able to manage salvaging the gold, or 
all of it . . . perhaps it was indeed the universally-magic thing, a Buried 
Treasure! . . . perhaps the loot of some captured galleon or — what dif- 
ference did it make! — a thousand perhapses! He, John Lutwidge Lime- 
killer, was rich! — comparatively speaking — he was (maybe) rich! 

Only maybe not. 

The she-turtle had had enough of digging, her nest-hole was now deep 
enough, and began to lay. 

Rich? Only maybe not. His fingers told him, after he had crept back 
to the great chelonian, that there were many coins in the hoard: how 
might that coast have shifted over the centuries because of storm, erosion, 
hurricane, and flood . . . and his mind told him something else. 

In every grant of freehold stood the words, and he knew them well, for 
he had, after all had been granted more than one freehold himself, for 
all that they were for but small acreages; there stood the words. All 
Indian Ruins and Mines of Gold and Silver and Precious Stones are the 
Property of Her Majesty the Queen, Her Heirs or Assignees: these words 
were emphatic and clear and admitted of no dispute. Well . . . almost 
none. Suppose such gold were already mined? Coined? Abandoned? 
Kicked up on a beach by the hind-flippers of a gravid sea-turtle with no 
more on her membrane-thing template of a mind than digging a hole in 
which to plash her scores and scores of opalescent eggs; what? Why, for 
that matter, was there only one turtle here and now? A matter for en- 
quiry; would anyone enquire? 

And . . . wasn’t there something, somewhere, amidst all the antique 
and baroque legal, terminology about treasure-trove and bonavaconcia, 
wasn’t there something about high-water mark? low-water mark? What 
should Jack do? For certainly he had to do something . . . and right now: 
one could hardly expect the turtle would remain fixed for a landmark 
whilst he ran loping along the strand to report the matter. 

And so he had taken the gold, he had shoveled and sifted, long after 
the turtle’s instinct, located in that reptilian little head protruding be- 
tween carapace and carapace, had told her that her oviducts might now 
rest; and off she had waddled, struggled, crawled, dipped into the water, 
sank into the water, was gone into the water: and about the sum of two- 
score and ten coins had he sifted from the sands. He had carefully set 
them down on his shirt, and, since it was the bad shirt, rent in at least 
one place and worn thin in others, he had tied the treasure by the sleeves 
and knotted them and then he had stripped off his trousers and slipped 
the swag inside of them and closed that outer covering up, then — 

Then he hied him down to the mangroves brown where the sea-tide 

LIMEKILLER AT LARGE 79 



sucked and sawed ... or something like that. . .very much like that 
. . . and had heaved it up onto his own boat, videlicet the ^I'acarissa, then 
lying at the mouth of Mangrove Creek, with all her apparel. And, after 
counting it a few times, say, about forty or fifty times, had stowed it in 
the cubby; well ... he had taken the trousers back, first, because really 
he needed them now. 

Also he had recollected to bring along a few of the eggs, and he set up 
the caboose, which, in British Hidalgo had no reference to railroad trains 
but referred to the little wood-stove set in a sand-box; and he had cooked 
them at leisure and eaten them with relish, and with salt and with 
pepper. 

They had tasted better than rice and beans. 

Eggs. 

As for turtle-eggs, very well, never mention the matter to anyone 
Chinese, however defined. As for eggs as something other than victuals 
iwittles, as Rud Goforth called them), as something thick with legendary 
qualities, there were also the obeah eggs. Obeah eggs came color-coded: 
a clean white egg meant one thing, a clean brown egg meant another; 
a speckled egg, whether the birdy sings of them or not, meant worst of 
all; and then there were eggs still stained with chickenshit and clotted 
with tufts of down and, sometimes, blood. A chapter in a local grimoire 
(were there such a thing, and there wasn’t) might be written about eggs 
stained red with anatto and eggs stained red with red mangrove 
bark . . . and the immense difference (qualitative rather than quanti- 
tative) between them. 

But . . . why does the eggs left at night symbolize death? 

Because the egg left at day symbolizes life. 

Is why. 

He had meant to report it. 

But the hours, as hours will, had gone by. The gold still stood (or sat) 
in the cramped cubby of his boat. And he had not reported it. 

Sailing south you see the weird sugarloaf-shaped hills behind Spanish 
Bight; whereas elsewhere, some hills seem five miles away and are ac- 
tually twenty-five, these hills seem to be one-and-twenty miles away, 
but are really only one. One mile away, that is. A curious phenomenon. 
They rise out of the midst of palm trees which look rather like the giant 
ferns of earth’s past eras; easily one may imagine dinosaurs nibbling on 
the tops of them. Something similar . . . could one call it confusion 
. . . delusion . . . afflicted Limekiller. He had forgotten to cross off how 
many days on his calendar (it advertized 30 Pure Turkish Cigarette 3o 
/ M., Grower and Mfger rather garishly, and was generally understood 


80 


AVRAM DAVIDSON 



to have been also of, if not the growth, then of the manufacture, also, of 
M.: but that was another story. Indeed.) how many days had he forgotten 
to cross off? he could not think how many. When had he found the trove 
of gold coins? had it been last night? the night before last? several nights 
ago? Limekiller was no longer, and pei'haps had never been, from the 
moment Doubt entered his mind, quite sure. At all sure. And, on the 
other hand, if he stayed aboard his boat, he would only be driven again 
to count the coins, and he could See himself becoming a latter-day Silas 
Marner: This would not do. 

If he left the boat, might not someone come aboard of her and peek 
and peer and probe and. . . . Nobody ever had. Before. So he had gone, 
he told himself, for a Walk. And the possibilities for walking being lim- 
ited, had found himself going into the hamlet called Woodcutters Cove. 
A hamlet it might be (might 6e? it was.), but it was also what foreigners 
sometimes called “the provincial capital”: not quite. A District was not 
really a province, being a Canadian Limekiller knew all about provinces, 
provinces had lieutenant-governors, premiers, legislative assemblies — a 
District had none of these. It had a District Commissioner, who was an 
administrative officer, the name of the District was Seville (pronounced 
by every man, woman, and child in British Hidalgo as Civil, just exactly 
the same as Shakespeare pronounced it. The King is as civil as an orange, 
a pun which had baffled Shakespearean scholars — none of whom had 
ever lived in British Hidalgo — almost ever since the death of James I 
and V), and its capital was Woodcutters Cove . . . though there was talk 
of moving it to Seville Town, where the citrus works were, and the bitter 
“civil oranges” made into marmalade. But they had been talking about 
that at least since King Edward had abdicated, not that there was nec- 
essarily a connection. 

Limekiller passed the old Anglican Church, the Parson’s Paddock, the 
Parsonage, and expected next to pass about a quarter of a mile of trash 
houses until he came to the shops and the liquor booths, and had begun 
to wonder at which one of the latter his credit might still be good, not 
at the Juno Club, not at the New Africa, not at the Bayman’s Bogue, 
maybe at the Little Bit of Heaven? maybe at the Hidalgo Club? when 
his wonders were interrupted by his being hailed from the Government 
Building in the following words, “Mr. Limekiller! May I give you a hail?” 

Grammatically, the question was not without fault. And to reply with 
some such reply as, “What in the hell have you just been doing you dumb 
son of a bitch?” was socially contra-indicated. The man who from an 
office window had called to him was Percival FitzEvans Blythe; Percival 
FitzEvans Blythe was perhaps not very distinguished-looking, he was 
perhaps not very well set-up, and even perhaps he had not a very intri- 
guing personality; but there was one thing about him which admitted 


LIMEKILLER AT LARGE 


81 



of no perhaps: and Limekiller, suddenly a prey to the dismals, was well 
aware of what this was. 

“Grood afternoon, District Commissioner,” said Limekiller. 

“Would you just step inside, Mr. Limekiller,” said Mr. P.F.E. Blythe, 
without a question-mark. And popped his head back in. The Stamp Acts, 
which had caused so many heart-flutterings and tea-bashings in British 
North America (old boundaries) had never disturbed a single soul in 
British Hidalgo, where in proposing a written contract it was proverbial 
to remark, “If you has the Queen’s head on a stamp, and a dollar for 
earnest, you cahn’t go wrong.” Limekiller now felt, dimly recollecting 
Mark Twain’s comment that the average man would rather see General 
Grant in full dress uniform than Lillian Russell naked, felt that he would 
much, much rather pay to see the Queen’s head on a thousand stamps 
than Percival FitzEvans Blythe at a window or anywhere else for free, 
stepped inside. And whilst doing so he encountered a licensed (so to 
speak) beggar commonly called Wee-Wee; Wee-Wee seldom encountered 
Jack without asking for a dime or a shilling or a glass of rum or a plate 
of rice and bean, always with a face the most ingratiating; his face now 
seemed to say, “I may not be six feet tall and blonde and I may be just 
getting out of gaol again for being publically intoxicated and Pissing on 
The Plinth but on the other hand neither have I just been asked by the 
District Officer if I would step inside.” They passed each other in a 
strange and strong silence. 

“You wanted to see me. District Commissioner?” 

The District Commissioner curtly gestured towards a chair facing him 
and, when Limekiller had seated himself, stared at him a moment with- 
out words, then asked, “Well, Mr. Limekiller, what about this gold?” 

The shock was immense. Had he not already been suffering from a 
guilty conscience, the shock would have been even more immense and 
it was to be feared that he would almost at once have incriminated 
himself, had he not suddenly remembered Rud Goforth’s advice; “What 
gold?” he asked. 

Another silence. Then the D.C. said, “Mr. Limekiller, anyone may 
bring charges and make accusations,” said the D.C. “And anyone may 
bear witness, true or false. But under our system of British Justice,” 
there was a slight but significant emphasis, British Justice, “something 
more is needed, and that is Evidence. Evidence openly presented in an 
open court at an open trial,” the word trial doing more to chill Limekiller’s 
blood than his sole trip to northern Labrador had done. “Mere testimony 
is not sufficient. We require evidence. Ev-i-dence. No evidence? No case.” 
He made a gesture. 

Someone else now appeared, namely Police Constable Lucas; more 

82 AVRAM DAVIDSON 



than once P.C. Lucas had helped Jack demolish a chaparita of rum (with- 
out the herb Contribo) at a club or booth; there was no trace of any such 
memory on the P.C.’s face now. “Would you read your notes,” said the 
District Officer. Would you step inside. Would you read your notes. The 
District Commissioner was expert in the donning of the velvet glove. But 
well did John L. Limekiller know what lay inside. 

“Acting upon information received,” read P.C. Lucas, “I went in the 
police launch to the place called Mangrove Creek, accompanied by Mr. 
Stopford the District Surveyor — ” 

Limekiller was puzzled, for the first time, genuinely. “The, ah. Sur- 
veyor?” he interrupted. 

The skies did not fall at this interruption. It was explained to him that 
it was well-known that the mouth of Mangrove Creek had at one time 
been located just inside the limits of Woodcutters Cove Town. And it was 
well-known that the effects of Hurricane Henrietta had closed that mouth 
and opened another . . . which lay outside the Town limits. It was also 
known that Hurricane Elvia had quite estopped this and opened yet 
another. But it was not known if this new mouth lay in or out of the 
limits. “The question of mooring fees,” explained the D.C. Money. 

On coming into sight of the vessel known to them as the boat Sacarissa 
registered as belonging to Mr. John Lutwidge Limekiller, P.C. Lucas and 
Surveyor Stopford observed two individuals unfamiliar to them moving 
about on the deck of aforesaid vessel and attempting to hand down an 
object not immediately identifiable to a third individual in a cayuco; did 
the two Officials open fire upon them? did they attempt to cut off their 
retreat? was the Magna Carta written in Volapuk? 

“. . . we then hailed the three individuals,” read P.C. Lucas, virtuously, 
“but they at once made their craft to the opposite bank, and escaped into 
the bush. We would have pursued them but,” here the P.C. raised his 
eyes to those of his superior, who evaded them in a manner which in- 
dicated that he was at that moment passing no judgment as to should 
they have pursued said three individuals into the bush but might raise 
the matter at a time subsequent; “. . . but upon observing that the object 
they had dropped was spilling gold coins we thought it best to return 
with it and them at once and to report the matter to the District Com- 
missioner,” and here he closed his notebook and stood with his legs apart. 

“You recognize this shirt, Mr. Limekiller?” Limekiller would at that 
moment have been willing to swear upon a copy of Domesday Boke and/or 
the British North America Act that he did not even recognize that it was 
a shirt, except that — 

— except that it had been mended once by Felix who, not content with 
sewing up its rents and tears had also sewed onto the right breast the 
initials JL in very large letters: and if there was anyone in the entire 


LIMEKILLER AT LARGE 


83 



District of Seville who had not seen him wearing it, it could only have 
been Blind Bob who sat in the Market Place, with his sightless eyes 
rolling, making baskets out of native rushes. Hardly perhaps a case 
where the principle of Stout Denial seemed in order. “Yes,” said Mr. 
Limekiller. 

“We have examined these coins and find them to be golden guineas 
of the Reigns of Charles II, James II, and William III,” said the District 
Commissioner . . . and indeed one would scarcely have needed to be a 
member of the Royal Association of Numismatists to have done so . . . with 
the monarchs’ names and titles emphatically emprinted on the coins in 
neat Latin abbreviations. 

“You may know, Mr. Limekiller, that although it is not forbidden to 
own such coins, their ownership must be registered with the Treasury,” 
Mr. Limekiller took advantage of the pause to say nothing, “in order to 
establish the question of rightful ownership.” Pause. Mr. Limekiller con- 
tinued to say nothing. “So you see there is more than one question we 
have to answer,” the D.C. began to tick them off on his fingers, “One, 
are these your gold coins? Two, if they are, then why have they not been 
registered? Three: if they have not been registered because you have just 
recently acquired them, then where and when and how did you acquire 
them? We perceive that there seems to be sand mixed among the gold 
and lying in the shirt which they were wrapped in. Can it be that the 
coins of gold were just recently dug up somewhere? — say, somewhere on 
the shore? In such a case we would have to add Question Number Four: 
was the gold obtained in an illegal manner or fashion?” Jack noted that 
the possibility that he had obtained the gold whilst illegally taking turtle 
eggs had not been raised: he himself was not going to raise it. “Question 
Five: is it not so that even if the gold was taken from someone who had 
himself illegally failed to register it, would that make the taking of it 
by someone else other than illegal? no — it would NOT! Theft would be 
and is theft! Mind you,” said the D.C., “I don’t accuse you of theft. Nor 
do I accuse you of having the gold in your possession — although you don’t 
deny do you, /looing the gold in your possession, do you? — other than 
legally?” 

Limekiller cleared his throat, but with great control refrained from 
saying, “Ahh.” Or even “Umm.” He said, “Who says it was in my pos- 
session?” 

The District Commissioner sat for a second with his mouth open. “Why 
who? Two of our Government officials . . . no . . . well ... if the gold was 
not in your possession, then how did it come to be on your boat?” 

“Maybe the same ones who were taking it off, put it on?” 

The D.C. brushed away an invisible fly. “Why would they have done 


84 


AVRAM DAVIDSON 



that?” And Limekiller quickly pointed out that it was not for him to 
ascertain their motives. “Best that you ask them that,” he suggested. 
And the D.C. looked up at the P.C. But P.C. Lucas continued to stand 
At Ease, saying nothing. 

The District Commissioner now looked his invitee? guest straight be- 
tween the eyes and said, “Now, Mr. Limekiller, it is not prohibited to 
own gold coins regardless of are they legal tender or not and the question, 
‘Are such coins still legal tender or not’ is one into which I will not go;” 
echoes of Churchill’s reply to the new secretary telling him not to end 
a sentence with a preposition: “This is an impertinence up with which 
I will not put.” — “however, we are obliged to ahsk, I will not say demand” 
(and. Damned nice of you! thought Jack) “how you did get these coins, 
because they are not in shall we say common ownership. So I shall now 
ahsk you that question.” 

There was a loonng pause. Then the D.C. said, “Very well.” He gestured 
to P.C. Lucas, who gathered up the shirt and its precious contents, the 
D.C. meanwhile unlocking the huge and antique safe, which would cer- 
tainly not cause Mr. Jimmy Valentine or his successors much trouble; 
but where was he? It would certainly baffle anybody in Woodcutters 
Cove, Seville District: shoved the stuffed shirt in under the shelves of 
official documents, closed and clicked it shut. “We shall, I trust, see you 
here at shall we say eight of the morning. Good evening, Mr. 
Limekiller . . . and I should advise you to think it over.” 

And think it over Jack did. All night long. 

There was nobody for him to think it over aloud with . . . save his 
former First Mate, Skippy the Cat who had been demoted in favor of 
Felix. Did Skip chant pieces of eight, pieces of eight? Nope: he offered 
no grounds for belief that because and just because Jack had not been 
confined in the district gaol for the night that he might not find himself 
confined there — or in the national one — at some future time. D.C. 
FitzEvans was a Bayman and hence “cradled on the water,” as were they 
all: he would know the state of the winds without even taking thought, 
and he would know that the state of the winds would not carry Limekiller 
on a flight from Colonial waters at this time. Not only not to “Republican 
waters,” not to anywhere well — the winds would indeed carry him now 
right onto the Muggleton Shoals and there he ... or his boat . . . might 
have to wait a very long time indeed before any friendly boats and their 
crews appeared to help tow . . . push . . . pull . . . shove him off; because 
right on the mainland circumjacent to the Muggleton Shoals was the 
cabin of old Sully Simpson, a very loud lunatic who notoriously kept 
open house for Tata Duende, the Spook of the Woods; and nobody darker 
than lard would come or go within a marine mile of the area. 


LIMEKILLER AT LARGE 


85 



Therefore, even if he, John Lutwidge Limekiller, was safely out of gaol 
for the night, such safety could hardly be expected to continue for very 
long. Maybe they couldn’t prove that he had the gold illegally (though 
maybe they could). And if not, maybe they couldn’t get him for not having 
registered it. Or maybe the question of, had he been poaching turtle eggs 
wouldn’t be raised ( would Ruddy Goforth . . . ? not without incriminat- 
ing himself for Abetting, he wouldn’t). 

Back and forth his mind raced, with many and many & But, & So, an 
And all night long. And all the early morning . . . because in British 
Hidalgo, “eight of the morning” was absolutely not early! 

— and as, for that matter, who were The Individuals who had boarded 
the Sacarissa and attempted to rob her — Limekiller had no idea. The 
Colony . . . which, being irrevocably on its way to independence . . . would 
not be a Colony for much longer . . . had been for long out of the way of 
the world: but the world, with its internal combustion engines, its radios, 
its vices, and its crimes, was inexorably creeping in. Jack did not wish 
to think that the robbers were Nationals (the phrase was replacing the 
old, bad word Colonials), but it seemed unlikely that foreigners would 
have come up from Republican waters in a cayuco — but it really didn’t 
matter . . . just as it really didn’t matter that if he had been content to, 
in the delicate Hidalgo phrase, “ease himself’ near to the boat instead 
of seeking the privacy of the bush on his way to town then he might have 
spied the intruders and scared them off. . . . 

Once again, as so often, he passed the Parsonage, passed the Parson’s 
Paddock, passed the Anglican Church, and came to the Government 
Building. 

This time Wee-Wee (he was named after the wee-wee ant, which, with 
its voracious appetite, counterfeits the leaf-eating wee-wee disease) was 
not on the steps. But that didn’t really matter, either. 

The District Commissioner wasted neither time nor words. 

“Now, Mr. Limekiller, what about this gold?” 

J.L. recalled yet again Ruddy (Joforth’s Principle: “ ‘Stout denial,’ Re- 
gardless and whatever: 'stout . . . denial.’ ” For . . . after all . . . what 
alternative? Even if he didn’t get charged with this offense or that offense 
there was the very good (or very bad) chance of being ordered to leave 
the country and not come back. And he had, really, grown to love the 
little land, smaller than Newfoundland, British Hidalgo, the “country 
that you can put your arms around,” even if it was also “the end of the 
line.” Being there, even with its bugs and spooks, was and had for quite 
a time been better than being in Toronto in the snow — and even if it 
rained just as much as it rained in Vancouver, well the rain was warmer. 
And also . . . well . . . never mind. . . . 

“What gold?” he asked. 


86 


AVRAM DAVIDSON 



The D.C. looked a moment at him. Then he swiveled his chair around 
and worked at the dial of the old safe. The official papers laced with their 
red tape were where they had been. Nothing much else was there. The 
D.C. scrajied his hands along the bottom. Some grains of sand. Some 
crumbles of dirt. The bad old shirt. Nothing else. Nothing else. The D.C. 
turned around. His mouth worked. Then he said, “Mr. Limekiller. Where 
is that gold?” 

Jack felt his lips crack. But all he said was, staunchly, “What gold?” 

Another silence. Then, moved by the devil, Limekiller said, “District 
Commissioner, I will thank you for that shirt — ” 

The District Commissioner took out the shirt, shook it, handed it over. 
Then he made an emphatic gesture, Limekiller left. He sneaked a look 
at Police Constable Lucas, but Police Constable Lucas, carefully looking 
at the wall, did not sneak back. The D.C. was, suddenly, shouting, “I 
shall call in the C.I.D.! I shall have the safe dusted for fingerprints! I 
shall discharge every police constable on duty lahst night! I shall take 
it up to the Colonial Privy Council! I shall take it up to the Law Lords 
in London! I — ” The door closed on him and on what else he should do. 
Only, of course, he wouldn’t. For — 

No evidence? 

No case! 

Because — 

British Justice! 

The outside world had begun to bring in its rot and corruption. But 
it had only begun. 

Outside . . . well, not outside the District Office Building . . . outside 
the office of the District Commissioner . . . Limekiller found himself in 
the familiar-enough out-district police room. These rooms served for 
many purposes which were not always involved with crime, and, while 
not always the same, were always similar. This one had of course been 
whitewashed — but not very recently. It was immaculate. As always. On 
the wall (invariably), two framed photographs: Her Majesty the Queen, 
who theoretically owned British Hidalgo and might, theoretically, sell 
it all to a real estate syndicate — but probably wouldn’t; that was one of 
the photographs. The other, just a mite smaller, was of the Honorable 
Llewellyn Gonzaga MacBride, the Queen’s First Minister in British Hi- 
dalgo. She was in full regalia. He was wearing a shortsleeved shirt open 
at the neck, no tie. They both wore smiles. 

Overhead the slow fan. 

At the dais, no one. 

Not now, at any rate. 


LIMEKILLER AT LARGE 


87 



Behind a table doing extra duty as a desk, a police constable. He and 
Jack exchanged civil looks. 

“Yes, Mr. Limekiller?” 

“Am I, well, free to go? Eh?” 

The P.C. slightly pursed his lips, slightly raised his eyebrows. It was 
the studiously non-committal face of a man being asked to guess the 
value of a sand-sailing-barge. He rose to his feet in a smooth motion. 
“If you will just make yourself at ease a moment, Mr. Limekiller, I will 
just go into the. . . .” He did not finish the sentence, but its meaning was 
obvious. The door of the inner office was opened for a moment, a voice 
(previously muffled) was heard, loud and clear, demanding to know “Why 
is there no Canadian High Commissioner in this Colony? — do they think 
that they can come down here and commit all kinds of tricks, just because 
they are from a Commonwealth country? I — what? what? He is still here? 
Out, out, OUT — get him out! I shall — ” and the door closed again and 
the police-constable returned to his desk. 

Slightly he shook his head, said, “Jock, you w’only vex de man!” “Only,” 
in Baytalk, an intensive: during a heat wave, it was “only” hot; during 
a downpour, it was “only” raining. 

Jack said, “Eh?” 

The police constable was once again studying the sand-barge. Very 
politely, though, he indicated the door to the outside world. “Mr. Lime- 
killer,” he said, “you are now at large.” 

Limekiller walked down the street. First building in the next block, 
shaded by a purple-drooping jacaranda tree, was . . . still . . . sun-wor- 
shippers or not . . . the Anglican Church, crusted with lichens and moss. 
Would he go in and give thanks? There was, really, a lot of work he 
should be doing on his boat before Felix got back. Whatsoever thy hands 
find to do, do it with thy might: Best he got back to his boat and think 
his pious thoughts there. But the way took him past the Parson’s Paddock, 
where no horse had pastured for many years. And then the way took him 
past the Parsonage and its late Tropical Gothic verandahs shielding the 
inner rooms from view. But not from sound. In the Parsonage was, ev- 
idently, the Parson’s wife, Mrs. Standish. The climate was, indeed, “not 
kind” to the spinnet. Perhaps also Mrs. Standish’s singing voice was past 
its prime. But gallantly she played and sang. He could hear her quite 
clearly. Believe me, if all those endearing young charms, sang Mrs. Stan- 
dish, which 1 gaze on so fondly today, were to fleet by tomorrow and fade 
in my arms, Mrs. Standish sang. The waters of the Bay of Hidalgo slapped 
languidly along the shore. What had happened during the night? what 
had Aappened? — like fairy gifts fading away, sang Mrs. Standish. 

Limekiller got into his skiff. # 


88 


AVRAM DAVIDSON 




Lisa GolcJstein's most \i)Y 
recent novel, Tourists, was\ \ 
published last.summer by . . 
Simon & Schuste,r. Although 
it shares the Same name V 
as a story she published " 
here (February 1985), Ms. 
Goldstein tells us that the : 
only thing the two.' really 
share is their mysterious '. 
and exotic setting. 

"The Blue Love Potion" , 
is set in a familiar 
corner of the United - 
State^, but it, too, 
Explores an 

enigmiitic realm. ' ; 


by Lisa Goldstein 



All together, Rose had the love potion for six years. 

Six years ago she and her best friend Vicki drove from Los Angeles 
to Mexico, hoping to find a shaman like the one in the Carlos Castenada 
books. In three weeks of wandering they met only students from the 
United States, all of them seeu'ching for the same thing, all of them eager 
to trade rumors. Rose suggested to Vicki that they could make a fortune 
by publishing a newsletter. Shaman Times, and selling it to the students. 

The day before they went home they met the old woman. She looked 
exactly like what they were after, gray-haired, dressed in a heavy em- 
broidered skirt and shawl. A bruja. She stood in the central plaza of one 
of the innumerable small towns they had seen, holding out to them a 
tiny glass bottle filled with a startlingly blue liquid. 

They stopped immediately to talk to her. She spoke no English, and 
Rose could only speak bad high school Spanish. Vicki, who had taken 
French, was no help at all. After a while, though. Rose understood that 
the old woman had no wisdom or exotic drugs to give them, that she 
wanted to sell them — ^to Rose’s astonishment — a love potion. She was so 
insistent that Rose and Vicki bought one each. 

“But you must be careful, Rosa,” the woman said. Rose translated 
slowly and with the help of a dictionary, and even then she was not at 
all sure she followed what the woman was saying. “You must not give 
this to the first man who comes along. You must wait until you find a 
man you can spend your life with, and then you must give it to him. Only 
then.” 

For four years she and Vicki played a game that revolved around the 
blue bottle. In their weekly phone calls they talked about the men they 
had dated and the men they would like to date, and after each description 
the other said, “Yeah, but would you give him the love potion?” Then 
they both laughed. One year Vicki met a man who came close and the 
next year Rose nearly took the bottle out of her jewelry box and poured 
it in her date’s drink, but both had backed off. “If he was really right for 
you,” Rose said over the phone, “you wouldn’t need the potion. He’d love 
you anyway.” 

“You’re an incurable romantic,” Vicki said. 

The year Rose met James she thought the game had ended. A friend 
pointed him out at a party. “That’s the guy I was telling you about,” he 
said. “He does stand-up comedy. I never saw anyone so funny in my life.” 

At first she couldn’t find him in the crowd. He was surrounded by what 
seemed to be every good-looking woman at the party. When he finally 
came over to talk to them she was surprised to see that he was a little 
fat and had no-color, protruding eyes. Her friend introduced them and 
he stayed close to her all evening, commenting wryly on the guests, the 
food, the host’s furniture. Women came up to talk to him and laughed 


90 


LISA GOLDSTEIN 



at everything he said, even if it was only, “How you doing?” But he got 
rid of them quickly and continued his private monologue. She felt enor- 
mously flattered he had singled her out. 

They moved in together six months later. “Would you give him the 
potion?” Vicki asked over the phone. James was out at a comedy club. 

“I don’t need to,” Rose said. She had always wanted to say that. 

“You sure?” Vicki said. “What’s he doing this very minute?” 

“Flirting with every pretty woman in the club,” Rose said. “But he’ll 
come back.” 

After she hung up Rose went to the bathroom and looked at her face 
in the mirror. There were shadows under her eyes and she put on make- 
up to cover them. She stepped out of the high heels she had started 
wearing — James had said he liked tall women — and went back into the 
living room to wait for him. 

Should she use the potion? James liked her in part for her looks, but 
how long would her looks last? And his continuous monologue, while it 
still made her laugh, had never broadened out to become a dialogue. 
There was a lot he didn’t know about her. He still didn’t know, for 
example, that she was trying to write a screenplay. 

Did she really want to spend the rest of her life with him? 

Over the weeks, after James had gone out for the evening, she told 
Vicki her fears one by one. James would not come home that night. 
James would become successful and want to move to New York. James 
would leave her for another woman. 

During the day she worked in a shopping mall, selling cookies. She 
smiled at the customers and asked if she could help them, she weighed 
the cookies on the scale, she made change, and she thought almost en- 
tirely of herself and James. She had stopped working on the screenplay, 
though that wasn’t really James’s fault. It just didn’t seem that important 
when weighed against his career and his ambitions. 

“I’ll bet you,” someone said behind her after she had rung up a sale, 
“that I can talk to the next person who comes up here in Japanese, and 
that they’ll answer me in fluent Japanese.” 

She turned around. She knew the man’s name was Terry, but she 
couldn’t remember talking to him before. “What?” she said. Terry re- 
peated his bet. 

“Okay,” she said, and when the next person came up to the counter, 
a man with four children in tow, she watched carefully as Terry said, 
“Hi!” and the man, looking a little puzzled at Terry’s emphasis, answered, 
“Hi!” 

It was a relief to laugh, though she tried to wait until the man and his 
children had gone. “All right,” she said to Terry. “What do you win?” 

“I don’t know,” he said. “Want to go out for lunch?” 


THE BLUE LOVE POTION 


91 



“Sure,” she said. 

They went to the salad har a few shops over and took their salads to 
the crowded central area serving all the fast-food shops. “So,” Terry said. 
“Go to any auditions lately?” 

“No,” she said. “I’m not — I don’t want to act.” 

“You’re the only one, then,” he said. “Too smart, I guess.” 

“I’m not that smart,” she said. “I’m writing — I was writing — a screen- 
play.” 

“Really?” he said. “What’s it about?” 

“Oh, well . . .” she said. “It’s not something I want to talk about. I take 
it you go to auditions.” 

“Yeah,” he said. “Or I would, if I got called for more of them. I’m thirty 
years old, and if you haven’t made it in L.A. by the time you’re thirty 
you’re a failure.” 

“So what do you want to do?” 

“I don’t know,” he said. “Sell cookies. It’s a rewarding job, providing 
nourishment, spreading happiness to the people . . .” 

“And so lucrative, too,” she said. 

“Yeah,” he said. “Actually what I think I really want is to get the hell 
out of L.A.” 

“L.A.’s not so bad,” she said. “People come here thinking they’ll make 
a killing in the industry, and so all they ever talk to are other people 
trying to make a killing in the industry, and they never take the time 
to really get to know it. You can still find some interesting places in Los 
Angeles.” 

“Name one.” 

“Watts Towers,” she said. “These crazy towers made out of concrete 
and pottery, built by an Italian immigrant who had no training at all 
in architecture. The Venice canals, built by another crazy guy who 
wanted to turn the beach into Venice, Italy. Some old parts near down- 
town, that still look like a small Spanish village— Should I go on?” 

“That’s okay,” he said. 

“But you know what?” she said. “Sometimes all I want is to get the 
hell out of L.A. myself.” 

“Why?” 

“Because of what you said,” she said. “If you haven’t made it here by 
the time you’re thirty you’re a failure.” 

“You’re thirty?” he said. “You’re kidding. I thought you were twenty- 
five.” 

“I’m thirty-one,” she said. 

“Have you ever thought of acting?” he said. 

“I don’t want to say words other people put in my mouth,” she said. 
“I want to write the words for them to say.” 

92 


LISA GOLDSTEIN 



He looked at the clock in the hot-dog stand. “Oh, my God,” he said. 
“We’ve been here over an hour.” 

During the next few weeks she showed him all the places they had 
talked about at lunch. Then the inevitable happened: after a guest spot 
on David Letterman James left her for a younger women. She barely 
cared. Her grandmother died, and with her small legacy she and Terry 
got the hell out of Los Angeles, heading north along the California coast. 

They pulled off for gas at a town represented by the smallest possible 
dot on the map. It was mid-afternoon, overcast and humid; the distant 
horizon looked as if someone had poured milk down from the sky. 

“You hungry?” Terry asked, after they got back in the car. 

“Yeah, a little,” Rose said. 

He made a U-turn in the middle of the street and drove down two 
blocks. They could hear the drag of the ocean a few streets over; Rose, 
still used to Los Angeles, kept thinking the sound was traffic. “Saw this 
on the way over,” Terry said. He stopped in front of a restaurant with 
dusty neon tubing in the windows. 

“Looks great,” Rose said. They parked the car and went inside. 

Once they were seated and looking at a menu they saw that the res- 
taurant’s specialty was ice cream: sundaes and floats and splits and 
single scoops. A box at the bottom of the menu, almost an afterthought, 
listed a few sandwiches. 

“What the hell,” Rose said. “I guess I’ll just have ice cream.” 

“Okay,” Terry said. “Me too.” 

The waitress brought the bill along with their order. Suddenly she 
realized, in a moment of sharp guilt that she tried to hide from Terry, 
that she hadn’t looked at the prices. They had made a budget at the 
beginning of the trip, but each day away from Los Angeles they felt it 
become more and more of an irrelevance, about as important as a copy 
of the Magna Carta. Rose reached for the bill first. 

“Look,” she said. Her order, a chocolate sundae without whipped cream, 
had become “Choc Sun Wow.” And Terry’s, hot apple pie a la mode, had 
been changed by the waitress into “Happi Ala.” 

“Choc Sun Wow,” Rose said. “Sounds like an alien. ‘My name is Choc 
Sun Wow, take me to your leader.’ ” 

“Happi Ala — that’s a commune near Los Angeles,” Terry said. “Anyone 
thinking negative thoughts is banished forever.” 

“When I was in grade school there was this kid who used to say, ‘If 
we’re not careful we’ll all be blown to Kingdom Come,’ ” Rose said. “I 
guess he got it from the Late Show or something. But every time I heard 
him I thought he said Kingdom Kong. I kept thinking of this place ruled 
over by a giant ape, a happy place really, where you could do pretty 


THE BLUE LOVE POTION 


93 



much anything you wanted. Kong would take care of all those annoyances 
like your parents or your teachers. I bet that’s what they eat there — Choc 
Sun Wow and Happi Ala. What do you think?” 

“What?” Terry said. 

“You weren’t listening to me,” Rose said. “Again.” 

“Sure I was,” Terry said. “Actually, you know what I was thinking? 
I was thinking that now I know exactly what beauty is. Anyone who 
asks, you can refer them to me. I’ll explain it.” 

“Okay,” Rose said. “What is it?” 

“It’s change,” he said. “Only things that change are beautiful. I was 
watching your face a moment ago and it was like looking at three or four 
people, one after the other. I couldn’t take my eyes off you. When you 
looked at the bill you were so serious, and then you looked up and 
laughed, and then while you were talking you frowned and I could tell 
what you would look like in twenty years. I think I’ve really discovered 
something. It’s only things that stay the same forever that are ugly.” 

“I still think you weren’t listening,” she said. “But since you’re being 
so flattering I’ll have to forgive you.” 

“It wasn’t — ” he said. 

“Look,” she said, pointing to the window behind him. 

The neon tubing had been turned on. A V-shaped glass filled first with 
a red scoop of ice cream, then a blue one, then an orange one. A crescent 
moon, managing to smile even though his chin and nose nearly met, 
came on next, and then five stars, one after the other. The light stuttered 
out and blinked on again in the same order. The whole effect was so 
hideous, down to the garish colors thrown over the patrons sitting near 
the window, that there was something perversely appealing about it. 
They both began to laugh. 

Darkness was beginning to seep in around the sign’s bright colors. 
“What do you want to do now?” Terry asked. “It’s getting too late to keep 
driving.” 

“I don’t know,” Rose said. “Maybe we can try to find a hotel some- 
where.” 

“Okay,” Terry said. They went outside and got back in the car. A few 
blocks later Rose said, “Over there,” and Terry pulled over and looked 
doubtfully at the building she had pointed out. 

It was an old Victorian, badly in need of repair. Gray paint flaked off 
the corner tower and the scrollwork under the gables, off the latticed 
balcony and the steps leading to the front porch. One of the mullioned 
windows on the third floor was broken and backed with cardboard, and 
the rest had been painted the same dull gray as the building. A sign on 
the lawn said “Seaside Hotel.” 

“You sure about this?” Terry said. 


94 


LISA GOLDSTEIN 



“No,” Rose said. They got out of the car and walked up the uneven 
brick path to the front doors. One door still had what looked like the 
original glass, beveled and etched like frost, but on the other the glass 
had been replaced with flat plate. They pushed open the doors. 

A carpet of faded pink and green, worn completely through in a line 
from the door to the front desk, covered the floor. A tarnished brass light 
fixture dangled from an inverted cone in the ceiling. Rose had lived in 
an old apartment in Los Angeles where the floorboards shook every time 
she turned on the hot water, and she knew at once what the cone meant. 
The hotel had been lighted with gas a long time ago. “Switchboard Op- 
erator Wanted,” said a sign propped up against the scarred desk counter. 

“Can I help you?” the man behind the counter asked. 

“I want to apply for the job,” Rose said. “I can operate a switchboard.” 

The man looked not at her but at Terry. “I could use a handyman, too,” 
he said. “What do you think? I can give you folks a room and a small 
salary.” 

“Just a minute,” Terry said. He motioned Rose back toward the glass 
doors. “I didn’t know you could work a switchboard,” he said, whispering. 

“I can’t,” she said. “How hard can it be?” 

“I always said you should be an actress,” he said. “But how long do we 
want to stay in this town, anyway? I thought we were going to San 
Francisco.” 

“I don’t know,” Rose said. “As long as it stays fun. We can always 
leave if we don’t like it.” 

Terry nodded. “Okay,” he said to the man waiting for their decision. 
“We’ll do it.” 

At first, when they’d followed him up the stairs and seen their room, 
they had nearly turned around and left. The floorboards were so uneven 
in spots they were almost steps, and the rushes and waterlilies wallpaper 
peeled in patches like mange. But a wordless politeness made them bring 
their bags in from the car and start unpacking, and in only a few weeks, 
to their own eimazement, they had adapted completely to the slow pace 
of the town. 

Al, the man behind the counter, had been a minor chess master in the 
fifties and now owned the hotel. The old woman in 304 used to design 
costumes in Hollywood. Lynne, the younger waitress at the restaurant, 
was saving money to go away to college; the older waitress didn’t speak 
to them and they never did learn her name. 

In the evenings, after work, they went to the ice-cream parlor, or 
sometimes, rarely, to another restaurant in town. Back in their room 
they made love on the old brass bed, the headboard thumping to their 
rhythms against the wall. On weekends they went to the town’s one 


THE BLUE LOVE POTION 


95 



movie theater or to the beach, laughing like the natives at the weekend 
visitors in their elaborate cars. 

After a day of cutting off calls and connecting people to the wrong 
rooms Rose had managed to figure out the switchboard, which had to be 
at least fifty years old. Now she looked up as Terry, carrying a step- 
ladder, came through what A1 called the reception room. “Are you hun- 
gry?” he said. “I can stop work in a few minutes.” 

“Yeah,” Rose said. “The restaurant?” 

“Sure.” 

Rose went up to the room to get her heavy red jacket and they walked 
the two blocks to the ice-cream parlor. Days by the ocean were hot and 
sultry, but in the evenings the temperature plummeted. Sometimes they 
could almost spot the moment of change, when the tourists on the beach, 
shocked at the sudden chill, began packing up to go home. The streets 
were crowded with cars. The restaurant’s neon sign glowed from a block 
away, red, blue, orange. They put their arms around each other for 
warmth. 

Once inside the restaurant they took their coats off. The stout older 
waitress came over to serve them. She wore white nurse’s shoes and a 
white uniform. “A turkey sandwich,” Rose said to her. “And a choc sun 
wow.” 

The waitress didn’t smile. “I wonder,” Rose said after she had gone, 
“how long it took her to get like that. She didn’t even look at us.” 

“Lynne talks to us,” Terry said. 

“Lynne’s a lot younger,” Rose said. “I wonder if we’ll ever get like 
that.” 

“Don’t worry,” Terry said. “You have a lot of promise.” 

“I’m a switchboard operator,” Rose said, shaking her head. 

“You’re a switchboard operator with a lot of promise,” Terry said. Rose 
laughed. 

The waitress brought their order and Rose began to eat. “I got a letter 
today,” Terry said. He sounded so serious, so different from his bantering 
tone of only a minute ago, that Rose looked up. “A1 gave it to me this 
morning, while you were still asleep.” 

“Who was it from?” 

“My friend Rick,” Terry said. “I told you about him — we were in that 
acting workshop together. He got this part, he says. It’s a small part, 
and anyway the movie’s got a tiny budget, it’s independently pro- 
duced. . . .” He stopped. It was almost as if he couldn’t go on. 

“Yes?” Rose said, uncertain what he wanted from her. “Are you jeal- 
ous?” 

“Not jealous exactly,” Terry said. “I thought I was going to be, though. 
You know how when you stub your toe it takes a while for the pain to 

96 LISA GOLDSTEIN 



hit you? That’s how I felt, waiting for some kind of feeling. I felt — I don’t 
know — left out. There’s all kinds of things going on down there, and here 
I am, in this town no one’s ever heard of Not that I don’t like it here,” 
he said quickly. 

“I think it’s great here,” Rose said. “What more could you ask for?” 

“Everything,” Terry said. She looked at him sharply and he laughed, 
but she wondered what he was thinking. 

“So guess what?” Vicki said over the insistent whispering of the long 
distance phone line. It had only taken Rose a few tries to reach Los 
Angeles. “I used it.” 

“Used what?” Rose said. 

“Used what?” Vicki said. “The potion, what else?” 

“You used the love potion?” Rose asked Vicki. Terry, who was passing 
through the reception room, stopped and looked at her. 

“Yeah,” Vicki said. 

“On who?” 

“This guy. Paul.” 

“Did it work?” 

“Oh, yeah,” Vicki said. “He’s madly in love with me.” 

“But how do you know he wouldn’t have fallen in love with you any- 
way?” 

“Are you kidding?” Vicki said. “We’re talking about a guy who paid 
no attention to me whatsoever until I dumped the stuff in his coffee. Now 
he’s all over me. Maybe you should give yours to Terry.” 

“Naw,” Rose said. “We don’t need it.” As soon as she said it she wished 
she hadn’t. She didn’t mean to imply that they were somehow superior 
to Vicki, that Vicki could only find love with the help of a potion. 

When she hung up Terry said, “Vicki has a love potion?” 

“Yeah,” Rose said. “I have one too. Want to try it?” 

“No,” Terry said. 

“Seaside Hotel, good morning,” Rose said into her headphone. 

“I’m coming to visit,” the voice at the other end said. 

“Vicki?” 

“Yeah. Hi. I’ve got to get out of Los Angeles.” 

“What happened?” 

“I broke up with Paul.” 

“You did? Why?” 

“I couldn’t stand it,” Vicki said. “He was all over me. Wanted to stay 
over, to move in together, to get married, to raise a family together ... he 
had our future planned into the next century. He wouldn’t give me any 
space, as we say in Los Angeles.” 


THE BLUE LOVE POTION 


97 



“We’d be happy to have you—” Rose said. 

“Well, that’s the thing,” Vicki said. “I’ve only got enough money for 
the train ride. Could you — Can I stay with you guys?” 

“We can do even better than that,” Rose said. “We can put you up in 
a room of your own.” 

“Really?” 

“Sure,” Rose said. “There’s always a vacancy, and the owner never 
knows what the hell is going on. We’re practically running the place. 
And wait’ll you see the town. You’ll love it here.” 

“Vicki’s coming to visit,” Rose said to Terry that evening. “I told her 
we’d be able to give her a room.” 

“Probably,” Terry said. “Sure.” 

“What’s wrong?” Rose asked. “You sound worried. If there aren’t any 
vacancies — ” 

“I’m fine,” Terry said. 

“Are you sure — ” 

“No,” Terry said. “No, I’m not sure. I don’t know. I’ve been thinking 
that maybe — maybe I want to go back to Los Angeles.” 

“You do?” Rose said. “Why?” 

“Well, because of what we were talking about,” Terry said. “When we 
were wondering what was going to happen to us. All of a sudden I started 
thinking about how I ended up here, fixing someone’s bathtub in a town 
I never even heard of a few months ago. I mean, I was supposed to be 
an actor. I still want to be an actor. There’s not much chance of me 
getting any parts up here.” 

“It’s because of Rick, isn’t it?” Rose said. “Because he got that part in 
the movie.” 

“Well, a little,” Terry said. “But mostly it’s — Remember when I said 
I thought that beauty was change? I feel I’m stagnating here. I could end 
up doing this for the rest of my life and not be too unhappy, but I’d know 
I was missing something. There isn’t much for me here.” 

“I thought you liked this town.” 

“You do, I know,” he said. “But I think you’d like it anywhere. You 
even liked L.A. Sometimes I think you’re too — I don’t know — too ac- 
cepting. Too passive.” 

“What do you mean?” she said. 

“You never do things,” he said. “You just react. You might not have 
even left James if he hadn’t left you first.” 

“Sure I would have,” she said. “And I applied for the switchboard 
operator job. That was doing something.” 

“Yeah, but you didn’t go out and look for it,” be said. “It just came to 
ypu. That’s sort of an example of what I mean. You just drifted up the 

98 LISA GOLDSTEIN 



coast and ended up at the first place you stopped. No matter where we 
wound up you would have accepted it.” 

“I like to make the best of a situation,” she said. “I don’t see what’s 
so bad about that.” 

“Nothing, really,” he said. “But I’m not like that. I have to keep push- 
ing, see how far I can get. I want to try acting again.” 

“Well, okay,” she said. “We could go back. I could tell Vicki — ” 

“No, you stay here,” he said. “I know how much you like it here.” 

She felt it like a blow to her stomach. She sat down on the brass bed, 
barely hearing him. 

“I feel like I’ve been vegetating,” he said. “Now I’m not saying it’s your 
fault. It probably isn’t. But ever since I met you — I don’t know — -my 
energy’s gone, disappeared. I’ve lost my edge. If I go back to L.A. with 
you I won’t be able to compete.” 

“What are you saying — ^that you’ve been too happy with me?” she said. 
“You need to be miserable in order to act?” 

“No — I don’t know,” he said. “Look, I’m sorry. I just think I should go 
back to L.A. It has nothing to do with you.” 

He didn’t look any different. That was the thing she couldn’t get over, 
that he had changed so radically and there was no trace of it on the 
outside. He should have looked like someone out of Attack of the Mush- 
room People, taken over by something alien, foreign. 

“Of course it has something to do with me,” she said. “You just got 
done telling me how I was sapping your energy — ” 

“I didn’t say — ” 

“You listen to me,” she said angrily. “There’s something more to this 
than what you’ve been telling me. If you just wanted to act we could go 
back to L.A. together. You want out of the relationship, and you’re too 
much of a coward to say so. You’re using acting as an excuse.” 

“No, I—” 

“Forget that,” she said. She opened the door and slammed it behind 
her. Passive people didn’t slam doors, she thought with satisfaction. Then 
she went downstairs to the switchboard and dialed Vicki’s number. 
Vicki’s answering machine clicked on. “Hi, this is Rose,” she said after 
the beep. “Could you come out here as soon as possible?” 

Rose waited at the station as Vicki’s train came in. Only three people 
got off. Rose went over to Vicki and they hugged, and then Vicki pulled 
back. “You don’t look too good,” she said. 

“I don’t feel so good,” Rose said. “Is that all the luggage you have?” 
Vicki was carrying a small suitcase with a designer label Rose didn’t 
recognize. 

“Yeah,” Vicki said. They went out to the car. 


THE BLUE LOVE POTION 


99 



“So did you try that stufT?” Vicki said as they drove to the hotel. “The 
potion? It sure as hell worked for me.” 

Rose took her hand off the steering wheel and ran it through her hair. 
“I can’t,” she said. “Vicki, I — Well, what we had was so great 
because — because it wasn’t forced. It just happened, naturally. If I give 
him the potion. I’ll know — all my life I’ll know — that he didn’t come back 
to me because he wanted to but because I made him. See?” 

“No,” Vicki said. “All I see is that you want him back and you have 
a way of getting him back. Why you don’t do it is a mystery to me.” 

“Anyway, we’re talking about this potion as though we know it works,” 
Rose said. “I’m still not convinced that Paul wouldn’t have fallen in love 
with you on his own.” 

“I’m sure,” Vicki said. “I just picked the wrong guy, that’s all. If I had 
it to do over again I’d take my time choosing, believe me.” 

“You can have mine if you want it,” Rose said. 

“Really?” Vicki said. “You sure?” 

“I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t,” Rose said. 

“Well, great,” Vicki said. “There’s this sexy guy down the hall from 
me—” 

“I thought you said you’d be more choosy this time,” Rose said. 

“Right,” Vicki said. “I forgot.” 

Rose parked the car in front of the hotel. “This is it,” she said. “Terry’s 
been painting the trim on some of the windows, but I guess he stopped.” 
A few of the window-sills on the first floor had been painted a restful 
blue which matched perfectly with the faded gray. 

They walked through the reception room and climbed the scuffed 
wooden stairs to the second floor. Rose showed Vicki her room. 

“Where are you staying?” Vicki said. 

“Just a few rooms down,” Rose said. “Come on. I’ll show you.” She 
walked Vicki down the hall. “See the way the wall’s made of wood until 
about waist-high, and then it changes to wallpaper?” she said. “That’s 
called a dado. A1 told me that.” 

“Is that wallpaper?” Vicki said. “You can barely see it under the dirt.” 

“This place must have been beautiful once,” Rose said. She unlocked 
the door to her room and they went inside. 

“Two beds?” Vicki said. 

“He brought the cot in when he decided he was going to leave,” Rose 
said. “He’s only staying until A1 gives us our next paycheck.” 

“What an asshole,” Vicki said. “Why don’t you move into my room? 
Maybe he’ll miss you enough to change his mind.” She sat on the brass 
bed and kicked off her shoes. 

“I don’t want to play games like that,” Rose said, sitting next to her. 
“Either he changes his mind or he doesn’t.” 

100 


LISA GOLDSTEIN 



“It's all games,” Vicki said. “I still think you’re an idiot not to use the 
potion.” 

“Oh, right,” Rose said. “I was going to give it to you.” She got up and 
went to the heavy wooden desk she had been using as a dresser. Her 
jewelry box was in the second drawer. “I forgot how blue this is,” she 
said, taking out the small bottle and holding it up to the light. “I had 
a Siamese cat with eyes that color once.” 

“You’re sure you don’t want it?” Vicki said. 

“No, that’s all right,” Rose said. “Here.” 

“This time I’ll use it on the right person,” Vicki said, taking the bottle. 
“You’ll see.” 

The door opened. “Oh, hi,” Terry said, sounding embarrassed. Vicki 
put the bottle behind her, on the bed. “I didn’t know you'd be back so 
soon. I only came in to get my screwdriver. Hi, Vicki.” 

Does he really look furtive, or is that only the way I want him to look? 
Rose thought. He should know that he’s doing something wrong. But 
maybe, from his point of view, everything’s just fine. 

Terry looked through the tool box A1 had given him, took what he 
wanted and left. 

“He’s certainly changed,” Vicki said. 

“He’s got a lot on his mind,” Rose said. 

“You know what I can’t get over?” Vicki said. “The way you defend 
him all the time. Here’s this jerk who suddenly, with no warning what- 
soever, decides to leave you. Maybe he does have a lot on his mind, but 
that’s still no excuse. He’s still an asshole.” 

“I’m not defending him — ” 

“Though now that I think of it you stuck up for that asshole James 
too,” Vicki said. 

“Well, even James had his good points,” Rose said. “He made me 
laugh.” 

“You see?” Vicki said. “There you go again.” 

“It’s just that there’s no point in dwelling on the past,” Rose said. 
“Okay, so James treated me badly, I see that now, but you don’t have 
to bring it up every time we get together. And from now on you’re going 
to bring up how unfriendly you thought Terry was. I like to remember 
the good times. There were a lot of good times with Terry. There were 
even some with James.” 

“Not very many.” 

“You're doing it again,” Rose said. 

“Okay, I’m sorry,” Vicki said. “I won’t bring either one of them up 
again. I keep forgetting what an incurable romantic you are.” 

“I may be incurable,” Rose said, “but I think I’m in remission now.” 

* 


THE BLUE LOVE POTION 


101 



The night before Terry was to leave they ate together in the restaurant. 
Rose had been prepared to insist on it, but Terry had agreed quickly 
enough. Vicki came along, too, to be a buffer. Rose had said. “Okay,” 
Vicki said. “But I’m not going to talk to that jerk.” 

The neon window glowed behind them as Lynne came to take their 
order. Suddenly Rose remembered the time Lynne had talked to Terry 
for five minutes while customers lined up behind her, waiting to be 
seated. Terry could talk to anyone; once, in Los Angeles, he had dialed 
information to find out the number of a movie theater and was still on 
the phone an hour later. They had missed the movie that night. 

“I’ll just have a cup of coffee,” Rose said. 

“How come you’re not having ice cream?” Vicki asked. “Are you on a 
diet?” 

“No,” Rose said. “I’m just — I’m not very hungry.” 

“Well, then. I’ll just have coffee, too,” Terry said. 

“Okay, me, too,” Vicki said. “And a dish of chocolate ice cream.” 

“You know, I was thinking,” Rose said after the waitress had taken 
their order. “Maybe you’d better take the car. You know how hard it is 
to get around in L.A. without one.” 

“No, that’s okay,” Terry said. “I’ll be all right.” 

“How are you going to get down the coast?” Rose said. 

“I’ll hitch a ride,” Terry said. 

“You’re sure?” Rose said. 

Vicki looked disgusted. “I’ll go get us the coffee,” she said. 

Terry nodded. “I’ll be fine,” he said. He watched as Vicki went to talk 
to the waitress. 

Rose couldn’t think of anything more to say. This was Terry, the man 
she had laughed and talked with for hours during the trip up the coast. 
Friends of theirs had been astonished when she’d told them they were 
going to be driving for days in a car with no radio. “You’re going to kill 
each other by the end,” one of them had said. 

Vicki came back with the cups and set one down in front of each of 
them. The neon lights reflected on the coffee like the sun shining on 
dirty oil. No, only Terry’s coffee looked funny, almost blue. Rose snapped 
her head up to Vicki. “This time I’ll use it on the right person,” Vicki 
had said. “You’ll see.” 

Terry hadn’t reached for his coffee yet. There was still time to take it, 
to pretend she thought it was hers. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” Vicki 
said. “I’ll be back in a minute.” Terry blew on the coffee to cool it and 
took a sip. 

“You look good today,” Terry said into the silence. 

“Thanks,” Rose said. She felt like shuddering. Did it work so fast then? 
“What time are you leaving tomorrow?” 

102 


LISA GOLDSTEIN 



“I thought early in the morning,” Terry said. “Damn, I hate to get up 
early. Why don’t I stay here a little longer? Old Mrs. Mann still needs 
her ceiling plastered.” 

“No,” Rose said. “I think you should go.” 

“You know what?” Terry said, taking another sip of his coffee. “I don’t 
want to go. It was a crazy idea to begin with. I mean, who am I kidding? 

If I was going to make it as an actor I would have done it a long time 
*> 

ago. 

“I think you should go,” Rose said again. 

He didn’t hear her. “I don’t know what I was thinking of,” he said. 
“I mean, here we have something together that’s so great, that’s better 
than being in a hundred movies, and I was going to give that up. I must 
have been out of my mind.” 

“Excuse me,” Rose said. “I have to go to the bathroom.” 

Vicki stood touching up her blusher in front of the bathroom mirror. 
“I told you I didn’t want to use it,” Rose said. 

“You didn’t seem all that anxious to stop me,” Vicki said. 

“Stop you?” Rose said. “How could I stop you when I didn’t even know 
what you were doing?” 

“You knew,” Vicki said. She studied her face in the mirror, nodded as 
if satisfied with what she saw, and snapped the blusher shut. 

“You didn’t even ask me.” 

“That’s because I knew you wouldn’t let me do it,” Vicki said, zipping 
up her black leather bag. “Ever since I’ve known you you’ve sat back 
and let things happen to you. This way at least you take some control 
over your life.” 

“I’m not the one who’s taken control,” Rose said. “You’re the one who’s 
decided what’s best for me and then gone and done it.” 

“You still don’t understand — ” 

“No, you don’t understand. Sometimes the only way to control your life 
is to accept it.” 

“You see, you’re doing it again — ” 

“But you’re right about one thing,” Rose said. “I am going to have to 
make a decision. I’m going to have to leave Terry, and leave this town, 
and do it quickly so he won’t be able to follow me. I’m not going to be 
able to live with him knowing he was tricked into something.” 

“I was only — ” 

Rose closed the door gently behind her as she left. • 



THE BLUE LOVE POTION 


103 



The author’s most recent story 
for lAsfm, “Ripples in the 
Dirac Sea" (October 1988), 
was a finalist for the 1989 
Hugo award. Mr. Landis returns 
to our pages with a new 
story— both powerful and moving — 
about a group of young meniand 
the "Projects" that obsess them. 


art: Roger Raupp 



Ben dangled his feet over the side of the ledge and looked out across 
the Charles at the sunset. The day was breezy and cool, with sailboats 
zipping briskly up and down the basin. Across the river, Boston sky- 
scrapers were gold-plated by the October sun. 

Fifty feet below, none of the people walking along Memorial Drive 
even looked up. The ledge around the top floor of Walker Memorial was 
plenty wide, hardly a challenge, but Ben liked it for the view. It was a 
good place to sit and meditate. 

After a while Rat came walking down the ledge, carrying a burger and 
a Coke from Pritchett. He was crazy, but then Ben figured that all of his 
friends were crazy. Everybody worth knowing was crazy. 

“Hey ya, Benjy.” 

“Hey yourself. Rat.” 

Rat walked over and sat down crosslegged next to Ben. Ben reached 
over and grabbed a handful of his fries. The catsup was mixed half-and- 
half with tabasco — a trick Rat had taken up to discourage moochers — but 
Ben was so used to it he was starting to prefer them that way. 

“Got the midterm projects back today.” Rat — his full name was Jacob 
Ratjszek, which he hated — was in architecture. His midterm design had 
been a study for a plastic skyscraper, made rigid like a balloon by its 
own internal pressure. He’d worked on it for weeks. 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah. ‘Good imagination, but unrealistic. B -f .’ And a note; ‘please do 
something more practical for your final project.’ ” 

“Bummer.” 

“Fucking professor thinks I’m a twerp.” 

“You mean you’re not?” Ben regretted it the moment he said it. 

“Damn right I’m a twerp. I’ve got twerp written all over me. But just 
one thing, Benj. I’m one twerp that these guys are god damn going to 
remember.” 

Ben, Rat, and another student, Trenton Haverford, lived together in 
half a house in Cambridgeport. It was old, run down, with peeling paint 
and warped floors and in a less-than-nice neighborhood; but it was big, 
close enough to the Institute to walk, and not half as expensive as most 
of the apartments around Cambridge. 

The landlord was a medical intern whose hobby was collecting art 
deco. His wife raised Dobermans. The kitchen was her province, fenced 
off from the rest of the house, and filled with Doberman puppies. On 
Sunday afternoons she would invite poor starving students down for 
samples of bread, cookies, or whatever she was baking. 

Rat and Trenton had two old Jaguars, bought from a junkyard wrecked 
and rusted, one bashed in from the front and the other from the back. 


PROJECTS 


105 



They’d cut the frames apart halfway and welded them together. Covered 
with a tarp, the car frame sat up on blocks back behind the house, under 
an abandoned grape arbor, waiting for some day to come when they’d 
find time to work on the body. In the living room, engine parts were 
spread across the floor, across every chair, couch, table. Neither one of 
them had worked on it in months. They’d never get around to finishing 
it. That was yesterday’s project; today’s project was always newer, more 
exciting. 

It was a crazy house. 

Ben was course eight — physics. Trenton and Rat were both in Archi- 
tecture and Urban Planning. Trent weis tall, blond, handsome, and quiet. 
Rat was short and Jewish and quirky. Ben fibred himself for somewhere 
in the middle. He’d roomed with Rat his freshman year, and when they 
decided to go together on an apartment, Trent was a natural choice for 
a third. Trent was in the Urban Planning concentration, working on a 
combined masters. He’d picked Professor Tormic for an advisor. 

“Man, you have got to be out of your mind,” Ben had said. ‘The Tor 
has got a reputation a mile wide. He never cuts anybody any slack.” 

“Aw, he’s all right,” 'Trent said, “if you know how to handle him.” 

“Yeah? How’s that?” 

“Well, first thing is, you gotta be ready to work your ass off.” 

“Right.” 

“No, Tormic’s cool. Hell, he’s the only Professor in the ’tute that comes 
to all the grad student parties, let alone comes with some woman he just 
picked up at a bar.” 

“Yeah, right. Good reason to work for the guy.” 

Trent shrugged. “Well, that and the fact that he’s brilliant.” 

Trent was the only one who had a regular girlfHend, Mary, a chemical 
engineering major from Connecticut. She was rather cute, in her own 
way — long brown hair and a taste for dressing in blue cotton shifts. 'Trent 
often spent nights at her apartment. Ben had tried dating one of her 
roommates for a while. He’d thought they were hitting it off pretty well, 
but when he’d tried to make a move, she’d let him know where he stood 
real fast. “You guys are just too weird for words, you know? Like, you 
guys are kinda interesting to hang around with sometimes, but not on 
a day-to-day basis, okay? Frankly, I don’t see how Mary deals with it.” 

If Rat ever had any interest in women, he never mentioned it. 

When Ben came in the next day, he found Rat lying on the floor in the 
living room, looking on in amusement as the King of Nigeria stalked a 
sheet of transparent mylar that hung suspended in the air over the 
heating vent. Niger was stock still, only the tip of his tail twitching 


106 


GEOFFREY A. LANDIS 



occasionally. The mylar rippled and twisted with the passing air currents. 
Rat was cooking something up, thought Ben; he could tell by the spec- 
ulative look in his eye. 

Trent was in his room, scrutinizing a long spool of chart-recorder output 
spread across the floor. He had chart recorder output taped up across 
every wall of his room, results of geological measurements he’d taken 
over the last few weeks. 

“What’s up, Trent?” asked Ben, tossing his jacket onto the pile at the 
end of the hall. 

Trent looked up with a grin. “Good news, that’s what. Tormic says he 
thinks we have enough to publish. Our conclusions are pretty radical, 
but he says we’d better publish before somebody else makes the same 
jump. I’m getting it ready to submit for Urban Studies Review." 

“Hey, good for you. Go for it!” 

The walls of Rat’s room were covered with drawings and photos of 
buildings. Half of them showed skyscrapers. The other half were domes: 
sports arenas, churches, inflated tennis domes, observatories; covers from 
science-fiction books showing the cities of the future, with segmented 
domes rising from the plain like half-buried crystal balls. 

“A dome is a competition between materials strength and gravity,” 
said Rat. 

In the middle of their living room, clearing aside the engine parts. Rat 
had put up a five-foot square scale model of Boston. Trent had made it 
for a wind-tunnel project long ago, but Rat took it over as his own. He 
had put a dome over the city, made from ultra-thin plastic. The model 
was in front of the bay window. When the sun struck it, the air inside 
heated and the dome inflated. 

It was Rat’s project for the design course. 

“See, in all the old science fiction, they always have these cities with 
domes over them, right? But that’s stupid, no? Living inside a thing like 
that would be like being indoors all the time. Dull. People need to get 
outside sometimes, especially in good weather, don’t they?” 

“Sure,” said Ben, although he knew some people who wouldn’t even 
recognize the sun if they happened to see it one day. 

“You really need a dome you can put up in winter, when you need it, 
and take down in summer, when it’s nice, right? So here’s my solution: 
a transparent mylar dome.” 

“Like the tennis bubble, but transparent?” 

“Forget the tennis bubble, Benjy. I’m talking big bubble. I’m talking 
kilometers here. It stays inflated on waste-heat generated by the city. 
It keeps the heat from escaping, and so you can go outside in winter in 
your shirtsleeves. In the summer you just roll it up and store it away. 


PROJECTS 


107 



The savings in snow removal costs alone would pay for it, not to mention 
the energy savings.” 

“Pretty clever.” 

“Damn right it’s clever. But I know what he’s going to say. ‘Imagi- 
native, hut not realistic.’ Pfagh.” 

Rat joined him on the porch roof. The skyglow was just beginning to 
fade, and Venus stood out like a searchlight against the luminous pastel 
sky. They sat in silence until the stars emerged. It was a pleasant, 
companionable silence. 

“When I was a kid,” said Ben, “I used to climb up on the roof of our 
house, lie down on the shingles, and try and count the stars.” Rat said 
nothing. “Counting stars is tough; it’s easy to lose track and count the 
same ones twice. When that happens you have to start over again from 
the beginning. And the longer you’re out, the more you see.” The night 
was an endless dark and the stars seemed so close that he could almost 
brush them with his outstretched fingertips. “I used to say the numbers 
out loud so I wouldn’t lose track.” Sometimes he would so lose himself 
in contemplation that he would hear his own voice counting . . . six 
hundred eighteen, six hundred nineteen, six hundred twenty . . . and for 
a moment fail to recognize the voice, or what it was saying. “You ever 
do anything like that. Rat?” 

“Nah.” A jet crossed the sky, for a moment rivaling Venus in bright- 
ness. When its noise had faded away. Rat continued, “Guess I was too 
busy trying to make rocket engines. Most of them turned out more like 
bombs, really. Blew out every window in the block, once.” 

“You know what. Rat? I never did manage to count them.” 

“Yeah. I know what you mean.” They were silent for a while, so long 
that Ben started to think perhaps Rat had fallen asleep. “You really 
think they’re out there, Benj?” 

“Gotta be. A hundred billion stars in the galaxy. Rat. Some of them 
have just got to be homes of other civilizations. If we haven’t seen them, 
we’re just looking in the wrong places. Or listening to the wrong things.” 

Niger appeared at the window, meowed softly, walked carefully out 
to rub once against Rat’s shoulder, and then bounded out into the night. 
“Lasers, huh?” 

“You got it.” There have been SETI — Search for Extraterrestrial In- 
telligence — attempts before. But those projects had listened for radio 
signals. “Aliens advanced enough to discover the laser wouldn’t bother 
with radio. The wavelength is all wrong — radio waves aren’t directional 
enough to communicate across interstellar distances. Intelligent aliens 
would use lasers. But nobody’s ever tried looking for laser signals. Nobody 
before us, anyway.” 


108 


GEOFFREY A. LANDIS 



On weekends Ben went out to Haystack Observatory, where his project 
team had set up scopes. They searched G IV stars, looking for narrow- 
band, coherent light. Finding nothing. 

“You just do that, Benj. Look for your aliens. And I bet you’ll find 
them. Someday. Me, I’m going to do what I’ve always wanted to do.” 

“Which is?” 

“Make tall buildings.” 

Early November the weather turned cool and foggy. Ben’s observatory 
session was postponed. He wandered over to Urban Planning to see if 
Trent was in his office. He was expounding on his project to a pair of 
mystified undergraduate assistants. 

“It’s like this,” said Trent. “The continental plates are moving, right? 
The Atlantic Ocean is getting wider, and it’s shoving the Eastern Sea- 
board up into the Allegheny mountains. The plate is being pushed on 
the right; it’s pinned on the left; and so a whole load of compressive stress 
builds up. Like this.” He put his hands together, palm to palm, and 
pushed. “Now, turns out the Boston basin is a paleozoic caldera. The city 
itself is built smack dab center on the extinct volcano’s throat, a big 
granite plug. And the pressure is squeezing on the plug.” He made a 
popping sound. “Just like a watermelon seed. But, in this case, it squirts 
down. Boston’s starting to sink.” 

“Come on. If Boston were sinking, wouldn’t other people have noticed 
by now?” 

Trent shrugged. “Nobody’s gonna find what nobody looks for.” 

“Then how do you know?” asked Ben. 

“Seismic tomography. The boss managed to borrow a machine over a 
weekend.” He grinned. “He’s a slave driver, but there are advantages in 
having a boss who’s got connections with the oil companies. The data’s 
noisy, but when you know what to look for, it’s there. Now, the way I see 
it, the Boston civil authorities take the ostrich approach. Obviously, 
that’s only going to work for a limited amount of time. This is a long- 
term thing; the city is going to sink for the next century. Boston is 
traditionally a city built on landfill, but there’s got to be a limit to how 
much you can keep building a city up. It would be interesting, wouldn’t 
it? Every ten years or so they’d have to raise all the streets, and the first 
floors of all the buildings become basements, while the basements become 
submerged.” 

Boston sinking. It seemed unreal and far away, nothing concerned 
with the solid, vibrant city Ben knew. “So what do you think they should 
do about it?” 

“Personally, you mean? Just abandon the place. Heck, move the In- 
stitute down to Florida or somewhere, and what’s Boston got worth keep- 


PROJECTS 


109 



ing, anyway? Just a bunch of old houses, and a couple of skyscrapers that 
are going to fall over anyway. Let it sink.” 

The undergraduate assistants looked appropriately shocked. 

“But, of course, you can’t put that into a thesis,” said Trent. 

Ben laughed. 

“Benjy — are you in on this hack?” asked Rat. “All I can tell you is that 
it’s big. It’s real big.” 

“Will it take a lot of time?” 

“Couple of weeks, maybe,” said Rat. 

“Can’t, then. Next week we have Haystack scheduled for twelve-hour 
runs, and after that I’ll be up to my ass in data.” 

“Okay, but you’ll regret it, I guarantee you.” 

“Are you really hard up for people?” 

“No, I got lots of volunteers. I just thought you’d want to be in on it.” 

“Can’t be helped. Rat. Sorry.” Ben looked at him for a moment. “Say, 
this isn’t going to be another Synthesis ofPhenylated Methyl-ethylamines, 
is it? You could get in a lot of trouble.” 

“Hey, no way. I swore off that. Besides, this one’s legal. Well, almost 
legal. Most of it, anyway.” 

Synthesis had been a science-fair project back in high school. He’d won 
the local science fair and was well on his way to winning the city-wide 
when three men wearing charcoal grey suits and sunglasses showed up 
and confiscated his display. Apparently someone had finally figured out 
that “Phenylated Methyl-ethylamines” was a euphemism for ampheta- 
mines. They’d taken him to the local police station and asked him ques- 
tions for three hours, but eventually let him off with a warning. Rat 
claimed that he’d never used the stuff he made; Ben believed him, since 
Rat was so wired naturally that using speed would have been like putting 
salt on the ocean. Ben figured that he’d probably just been amused by 
the prospect of playing his teachers for fools. 

“Yeah, right.” 

Rat spread his hands and grinned. “What can I say? I’ve got a rep.” 

“Tormic is up for tenure next week,” said Trenton. 

Rat kept scribbling away and mumbling to himself Ben looked up. 
“Trouble?” 

“Nah. They’ll give him a hard time, but he’ll make it. The man’s 
obnoxious, but you gotta see that he’s fucking brilliant.” 

“Yeah?” 

The summer before they found their place in Cambridgeport, Ben and 
Rat had both stayed at the Institute. Trent had gone back to Chicago; 


110 


GEOFFREY A. LANDIS 



he’d found a summer job as a junior assistant in the Mayor’s city planning 
office. Ben stayed in the dorm. Rat didn’t have enough money saved to 
pay for a dorm room; instead he set up a tent on the roof of building 24. 
The door that led to the roof was kept chained and padlocked, but Rat 
had sawed through one of the links of the chain, replacing it with one 
that looked identical but could be twisted open and shut. The tent lines 
he tied to vents and other protrusions; the stakes he welded into the roof 
itself by melting the tar with a hot-air gun. There was a bathroom on 
the top floor, but after it was dark he didn’t bother, urinating off the side 
of the roof into the courtyard forty feet below. 

Friday evening some enterprising hacker had crashed the network. 
The net mainframe responded to all commands with the same misspelled 
message: “HEY NERD! IT’S FRIDAY NIGHT. WHY AREN’T YOU OUT 
HAAVING A GOOD TIME?’’ User services couldn’t say how long it would 
take to purge the system. Ben decided that it was as good a time as any 
to heed the message. He looked at the posters in the lobby and found a 
mixer in the Sala. 

The party was a dud. Soggy tasteless pretzels and wax-paper cups with 
punch the color of radiator antifreeze and music played so loud as to 
make any chance of conversation impossible. The girls mostly sat around 
in groups of three or four. Makes it rather hard to go up and ask one to 
dance, Ben thought — you keep thinking, won’t all her friends think I’m 
insulting them? If one girl won’t dance, he felt kinda silly asking the 
next — what do they think, that he sees them as commodities? All the 
same? 

Ben did one dance, but the girl nodded and headed off. No interest at 
all. He looked around one more time and split for a friend’s house. 

When he got there, they were having a party of their own. Bob was 
strumming his guitar, Trent accompanying him on one of those little 
plastic recorders. Mary was with him. Ben expected her to be happy that 
Trent’s attention, for once, was on something other than his project, but 
she didn’t look very happy. 

The fireplace was burning wood scrounged from dumpsters all around 
the Institute, mostly loading pallets and shipping crates. Occasionally 
bits of paint would sizzle up in colors, releasing a quick burst of odor. 

Trenton was well on his way to oblivion. His paper had been rejected 
by Urban Studies Review. “A disappointment, but they’re choosy. We’re 
sending it to Geology Transactions; they’re sure to accept it.” 

The building 10 ledge was narrow, but if you followed it around there 
was a wide niche where you could sit and have lunch. When Ben reached 


PROJECTS 


111 



it, Rat was already there. As he sat down, Rat reached over and grabbed 
some of his fries. 

Trent never went out on ledges. Once they’d offered to show him around 
the Walker ledge, as wide as a sidewalk and at least as safe. He just 
looked out the window and smiled. “Sorry, guys. I’m not into suicide.” 

From where they were sitting, they looked out across rooftops: weath- 
ered green brass, flat gravel, forests of ventilation ducts separated by the 
occasional skylight. Rat waved his hand out at it. “Looks pretty real, 
doesn’t it?” 

“Why shouldn’t it look real?” 

“So how do you know that this is the real world and not a computer 
simulation?” 

“Too high resolution for a computer simulation.” 

Rat shrugged. “Yeah? So it’s a really detailed computer simulation.” 

“Not damn likely. You’re in it. No computer could ever come up with 
a world with something as unlikely as you in it.” 

“Yeah, right. So how do I know that it isn’t a simulation?” 

“It’s got me in it.” 

“And how do you know that you’re not a computer simulation, too?” 

“Because — ” Ben paused. “I don’t know. How do I know I’m not a 
simulation?” 

Rat shrugged. “You could try jumping.” 

Ben looked down. “No thanks. If I am just a simulation, I think I’d 
just as soon not know it.” 

Minnesota was too far for Ben to fly home for Thanksgiving. Trent’s 
parents were vacationing in Europe, and Rat never went home for hol- 
idays, so the three of them and Mary rented bicycles and pedaled down 
to Cape Cod. The water was far too cold to swim, but Rat did anyway, 
stripping down, shouting “Banzai!” and diving in; then immediately run- 
ning out to shiver by the bonfire Trent and Mary had made from drift- 
wood. When the fire burned down a bit, Trent wrapped the turkey in 
aluminum foil to roast in the coals. Trent and Mary shared a blanket 
and sang Beatles songs off key as the turkey cooked, while Rat, un- 
characteristically silent, huddled close to the fire, wrapped up in three 
winter coats. Feeling left-out, Ben walked down the beach, gathering 
more driftwood for the fire. It was well past sunset before Trent pro- 
nounced the bird done to satisfaction. 

Trent and Mary shared one tent while Ben and Rat put up a tent of 
Rat’s own design, a geodesic dome of graphite rods and iridescent plastic 
sheet which he claimed was half the bulk and a third the weight of a 
standard tent. 

Sometime after midnight a storm whipped up. Rat’s dome began to 

112 GEOFFREY A. LANDIS 



whistle and then, with a nearly ultrasonic twang, shredded. Ben grabbed 
his sleeping bag and dashed for the other tent, startling the heck out of 
Trent and Mary, who had slept through the whole thing. Rat chased 
down the beach after the tent poles. “Hey! That’s a hundred bucks worth 
of graphite rods! Help me catch them! Hey, it’s not funny, you guys!” 

In the morning, it was cool and overcast, but had stopped raining. Ben 
and Rat took a bus back to Boston with their bikes and the remains of 
Rat’s tent, while 'Trent and Mary cycled on down to Provincetown. 

The end of November, Ben’s research project hit gold. One of the nights 
when Ben was supervising the optical coherence survey, an undergrad- 
uate assistant was puzzled by an anomaly in the scan spectrum. When 
Ben checked it out, the source showed characteristics of coherent light. 
It emanated from somewhere near a star known only by a number, DB- 
4223B, a G subgiant fifty-seven light years from Earth. 

“Likely star for life?” asked Rat. 

“Who knows?” Ben shrugged. “Actually, we weren’t even supposed to 
be looking at subgiants in the first place — we were aiming at main 
sequence stars. This one got on the list by mistake. But then, who knows 
what t 3 q)e of stars are even likely to have planets? This one’s as good a 
bet as any, I suppose.” 

“He’s obsessed, Ben,” said Mary. “You talk to him. He’s impossible to 
live with. I just can’t take it anymore, it’s been that bad lately.” 

“Yeah, sometimes I know just what you mean. He’s having a hard 
time, you know.” 

“I know, but it’s just too intense for me. Does he have to be so obsessive 
about it? Couldn’t he relax, just for a few moments every now and then? 
I can’t deal with it. I can’t, I really can’t.” 

By the beginning of December, Rat hardly came home at all. He was 
always working on his project. When he came in, he was usually on the 
phone. “You sure that they don’t guard the helicopters at night? Okay, 
good. Do we have backup pilots for the other four?” 

Ben tried not to even wonder what he was up to. 

His own project was in high gear, working twenty-hour days. They 
were constantly excited. It was clear that they’d found a laser in the sky, 
a huge one. It was putting out, Ben’s professor calculated, as much power 
in a day as had been generated by all the power plants on the Earth 
since the beginning of civilization. But it didn’t seem to be doing any- 
thing — the power wasn’t modulated, it didn’t even seem to be narrowly 
focused. It just was. 

After a long session at Haystack trying to nail down the signal, Ben 

PROJECTS 113 



came home just before dawn. Trenton was still up, pacing back and forth 
around the living room. He was white. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe 
it. They denied him tenure.” 

After a while Ben got Trent coherent enough to tell the story. The 
tenure committee hadn’t actually denied tenure to Tormic; what they 
had done was only to push the decision off to the next year. Apparently 
Tormic’s research had been beyond question, but they had heard bad 
things about his teaching. And his research focus didn’t really match the 
department’s main interests — they hinted, without quite saying any- 
thing outright, that he might find himself happier if he found a spot on 
a geology faculty. He could try for tenure again next year, except — 

Except that he’d lost his cool. He insulted the tenure committee “ — a 
gaggle of worn-out has-beens and never-wasses, with turds for brains — ” 
and the department “ — morons who couldn’t see breakthrough research 
if it raped their sister and stole their wallet.” They were jealous of his 
brains, he’d said to Trent. Well, he didn’t need that bunch of jerks any- 
way. If he picked up a phone, he could have his choice of a dozen other 
offers in an hour. According to Trent, Tormic had gone on insulting the 
committee, in excruciating detail, for half an hour. At the end of it they 
didn’t need to fire him — he’d quit. 

The next day his office was already empty. A good-bye note was painted 
on the door in Wite-Out: “Starting at Amoco Monday. So long, suckers!” 

Trent was rather depressed all the next week. It was four in the morn- 
ing when Ben came in, and Trent was sitting at his desk, staring at his 
papers. In half an hour he still hadn’t moved. Ben was almost afraid to 
talk to him, but more afraid not to. 

“How’s it going?” 

“Okay,” said Trent, without looking up. 

“Thesis going all right?” 

“Maybe.” 

“Well?” 

“Got a committee,” he said. He put down his calculator, pushed back 
his chair, and looked up at Ben. “They want me to give an informal 
presentation to fill them in on what I’m working on, next week. They 
seem pretty sympathetic. I think it’ll go all right. I’m just a little nervous, 
that’s all.” 

“Well, good luck, then.” 

“Yeah.” Trent pushed his chair back toward his desk and bent back 
to work. 

After three weeks of observation and analysis, they finally concluded 
that Ben’s laser signal was no more than a natural optical maser oper- 


114 


GEOFFREY A. LANDIS 



ating in a supernova gas shell, a phenomenon that had been predicted 
by an obscure Russian astrophysicist back in the late sixties, but never 
before seen. Still, that was more of a discovery than most students ever 
made. It was plenty for a thesis. 

Rat spent all his time listening to the weather radio, plotting fronts 
and isobars on a plastic map of the United States. He was nervous. His 
final architecture project had been due a week ago. He’d gotten an ex- 
tension, but that wouldn’t last forever. He told Ben he had the paper 
written, though he didn’t volimteer to show it. The class required not 
only a paper, but a model. “Not yet,” he said, but he didn’t seem to be 
working on anything. He just sat on the floor stroking the cat and watch- 
ing the Weather Channel. 

Mary didn’t say where she’d gone. Her roonunates said that she’d just 
packed up and left. The Institute only knew that she hadn’t registered 
for classes for next term. When Trent tried to call her family, they hung 
up on him. She’d left a note in purple felt-tip ink: 

“I have to leave for a while. I’ve got to get away, get some time by 
myself to think things through. I’m sorry. Maybe I’ll see you in Septem- 
ber, okay? Maybe things will work out.” 

The night was crisp and clear, the stars brilliant in a velvet sky. Ben 
wished that he could be out obseiwing, instead of having to head home 
to work on his thesis. When Ben got in, he could hear Rat on the phone: 
“. . . . the front moved through last night. Another front is coming in 
tomorrow afternoon, it should drop a couple of inches of snow. As soon 
as we hear from the weather service, we’re go for tonight, four a m.” 

“They dumped my thesis,” said Trent. “I can’t fucking believe it! They 
called it science fiction. Told me to get back to the real world. They want 
me to start a new project. Jesus, a new project! I’m almost through, and 
they want me to start over again.” 

“Bummer,” said Ben. 

The dome went up over the Institute on a calm winter night two days 
into finals period. It was a military operation, zero hour four a.m. The 
dome itself was twelve tons of mylar, suspended under a skyhook heli- 
copter. Compressed air cannisters blew it open, and four smaller and 
more maneuverable Army helicopters snagged the main tension lines as 
it slowly settled over the Institute. Rat’s ground team grabbed the anchor 
cables, stretched them out to inch-thick steel eye-bolts that had been 
emplaced in quick-set concrete the previous night, and winched them to 
the specified tension. Another team released a controlled volume of he- 


PROJECTS 


115 



lium between the two sheets to hold it in position until the sun rose and 
the greenhouse effect took over. Ben wondered how he’d managed to keep 
an operation that big so secret. 

“The key rule of life,” said Rat. “Never ask first, for it is always easier 
to get forgiveness than permission.” 

It was like a warm summer day inside, while snow swirled outside. 

It was huge. It was magnificent. The headline in the Globe: “Doming 
the Dome: Tech Students Do it Again.” In the Herald-American: “Saran- 
wrapped Science.” The instant dome was on the front pages of a hundred 
newspapers, the latest and most audacious student caper from a school 
well known for technological pranks. 

Rat wasn’t there to enjoy his triumph. Ben finally found where he’d 
gone when he returned home late, and the phone was ringing. It was 
Rat, calling from jail. 

It turned out that Rat had used a fake Institute purchase order to buy 
the materials — a rather major item, since he had used nearly a hundred 
thousand dollars worth of mylar alone. He was also being held by the 
feds, who had been less than thrilled when it appeared that the helicop- 
ters used had been “borrowed” from the National Guard. 

With his usual good fortune. Rat only stayed in jail for a night. The 
helicopter company turned out to be his benefactors; their publicity de- 
partment wanted to feature the dome for a TV ad, and it wouldn’t do to 
have the builder in jail. They paid his bail and convinced the others that, 
all in all, it would be better if the theft charges were just quietly forgotten. 

Geology Transactions rejected Trent’s paper. “The settling of Boston 
is well known, and is already adequately accounted for by gradual 
compression of land fill. Data is interesting, but does not support such 
a far-reaching conclusion.” 

Late that night, Trent broke into Tormic’s empty office and brought 
in a tank of liquid nitrogen. He taped plastic over the ventilation grill 
and around the door and chugged down a fifth of Jack Daniel’s while the 
nitrogen boil-off slowly displaced the air in the office. No mess, no pain. 

The dome lasted about a month before it tore away in a strong wind. 
It was beginning to get dusty anyway. The Institute had already started 
making plans for a stronger one next year, bigger, financed by the money 
they would save on heating and snow removal. 

It was a warm day in March, and the ice was finally breaking up in 
the river. Ben, was looking across at Boston, trying to see it as Trent 
might have, transformed into a city of canals. After a while. Rat joined 
him on the ledge. 

“You still think you’ll find your aliens?” 

“Eventually. Or else they’ll find us.” 


116 


GEOFFREY A. LANDIS 



They sat in silence. 

“I look at Boston,” Ben said, “and all I see is your dome. Thin plastic, 
glistening in the sunlight.” 

“Forget that. That’s history. It’ll never happen in Boston, anyway — the 
prof was right about that all along. Too conservative. Tall buildings, 
that’s where the action is. You know Frank Lloyd Wright’s mile high 
skyscraper? Forget it! Technologically obsolete. Why think small? With 
composite fibers and dynamic control, I figure that we could build one 
ten kilometers tall, easy! Imagine it, will you?” He held out his arms. 

Ben shook his head and smiled. 

Ben kept the only remaining copy of Trent’s thesis. It must have been 
when he and Rat moved out of the apartment that it got lost. 

At any rate, he looked for it, but couldn’t find it the next year, when 
Boston began to sink. # 


NEAT STUFF 

(Continued from page 63) 

Though the film focuses on the 
interplay between the nanny and 
the parents, there are some unus- 
ual special effects, with the demon 
tree being the most important. It 
was constructed by Production De- 
signer Gregg Fonesca, who worked 
on the original A Nightmare on 
Elm Street and last summer’s big 
Disney hit. Honey, I Shrunk the 
Kids. 

Fonesca’s team built a three-story 
tree that dominates the mysterious 
part of the forest Seagrove’s nanny 
often disappears into. The steel 
structure is twelve feet in diame- 
ter, and hydraulics enable it to 
move in a realistic way. This a no 
rubber tree out of The Wizard of 
Oz. “When this tree moves,” Fo- 
nesca said, “you hear the wood 
splintering.” 

Outside of the woods, Fonesca 
has tried to capture the very nor- 

PROJECTS 


malcy of the couple’s life — ^the bet- 
ter to increase the horror that 
threatens them. “We started with 
the concept that this was a good 
horror story about ordinary peo- 
ple,” Fonesca said. “They are be- 
coming assimilated into the pop 
culture of California — ^but at the 
same time — they are not losing the 
values of home, hearth, and chil- 
dren. So in detailing their environ- 
ment we stress that there is nothing 
out of the ordinary.” 

Other special effects are being 
created by Peter Chesney of Image 
Engineering. John A. Alonzo, who 
filmed Chinatown and Scarface, is 
the cinematographer. 

Like William Blatty — who has 
returned to his roots with The Ex- 
orcist: 1990, Friedkin is returning 
to a genre that he helped revive. 
But Friedkin has given early warn- 
ing that the effects and shocks in 
his new film will be an integral 
part of a story about people . . . and 
not just a thrill ride of cinematic 
splatter. # 

117 




MR. BOY 


by James Patrick Kelly 


Reshaped humanity, immortality 
therapy, virtual environment parties, 
and Panasonic playmates are all a 
part of James Patrick Kelly’s “Mr. 
Boy.” This tale is the newest in 
a hard-edged and breathless series 
that has included “Solstice” (June 
1985) and “The Prisoner of Chillon” 
(June 1986). Both stories were 
highly acclaimed novelettes, and the 
latter ta le was the winner of our 
first annuai Readers’ Award. 



art: A. C. Farley 



I was already twitching by the time they strapped me down. Nasty 
pleasure and beautiful pain crackled through me, branching and re- 
branching like lightning. Extreme feelings are hard to tell apart when 
you have endorphins spilling across your brain. Another spasm shot 
down my legs and curled my toes. I moaned. The stiffs wore surgical 
masks that hid their mouths, but I knew that they were smiling. They 
hated me because my mom could afford to have me stunted. When I 
really was just a kid I did not understand that. Now I hated them back; 
it helped me get through the therapy. We had a very clean transaction 
going here. No secrets between us. 

Even though it hurts, getting stunted is still the ultimate flash. As I 
unlived my life, I overdosed on dying feelings and experiences. My body 
was not big enough to hold them all; I thought I was going to explode. 
I must have screamed because I could see the laugh lines crinkling around 
the stiffs’ eyes. You do not have to worry about laugh lines after they 
twank your genes and reset your mitotic limits. My face was smooth and 
I was going to be twelve years old forever, or at least as long as Mom 
kept paying for my rejuvenation. 

I giggled as the short one leaned over me and pricked her catheter into 
my neck. Even through the mask, I could smell her breath. She reeked 
of dead meat. 

Getting stunted always left me wobbly and thick, but this time I felt 
like last Tuesday’s pizza. One of the stiffs had to roll me out of recovery 
in a wheelchair. 

The lobby looked like a furniture showroom. Even the plants had been 
newly waxed. There was nothing to remind the clients that they were 
bags of blood and piss. You are all biological machines now, said the 
lobby, clean as space station lettuce. A scattering of people sat on the 
hard chairs. Stennie and Comrade were fidgeting by the elevators. They 
looked as if they were thinking of rearranging the furniture — like maybe 
into a pile in the middle of the room. Even before they waved, the stiff 
seemed to know that they were waiting for me. 

Comrade smiled. "Zdrast’ye.” 

“You okay, Mr. Boy?” said Stennie. Stennie was a grapefruit yellow 
stenonychosaurus with a brown underbelly. His razor-clawed toes clicked 
against the slate floor as he walked. 

“He’s still a little weak,” said the stiff, as he set the chair’s parking 
brake. He strained to act nonchalant, not realizing that Stennie enjoys 
being stared at. “He needs rest. Are you his brother?” he said to Comrade. 

Comrade appeared to be a teenaged spike neck with a head of silky 
black hair that hung to his waist. He wore a window coat on which 
twenty-three different talking heads chattered. He could pass for human, 

120 


JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



even though he was really a Panasonic. ”Nyet,'’ said Comrade. “I’m just 
another one of his hallucinations.” 

The poor stiff gave him a dry nervous cough that might have been 
meant as a chuckle. He was probably wondering whether Stennie wanted 
to take me home or eat me for lunch. I always thought that the way 
Stennie got reshaped was more-funny looking than fierce — a python that 
had rear-ended an ostrich. But even though he was a head shorter than 
me, he did have enormous eyes and a mouthful of serrated teeth. He 
stopped next to the wheelchair and rose up to his full height. “I appreciate 
everything you’ve done.” Stennie offered the stiff his spindly three-fin- 
gered hand to shake. “Sorry if he caused any trouble.” 

The stiff took it gingerly, then shrieked and flew backwards. I mean, 
he jumped almost a meter off the floor. Everyone in the lobby turned and 
Stennie opened his hand and waved the joy buzzer. He slapped his tail 
against the slate in triumph. Stennie’s sense of humor was extreme, but 
then he was only thirteen years old. 

Stennie’s parents had given him the Nissan Alpha for his twelfth 
birthday and we had been customizing it ever since. We installed blue 
mirror glass and Stennie painted scenes from the Late Cretaceous on the 
exterior body armor. We ripped out all the seats, put in a wall-to-wall 
gel mat and a fridge and a microwave and a screen and a mini-dish. 
Comrade had even done an illegal operation on the carbrain so that we 
could override in an emergency and actually steer the Alpha ourselves 
with a joystick. It would have been cramped, but we would have lived 
in Stennie’s Car if our parents had let us. 

“You okay there, Mr. Boy?” said Stennie. 

“Mmm.” As I watched the trees whoosh past in the rain, I pretended 
that the car was standing still and the world was passing me by. 

“Think of something to do, okay?” Stennie had the car and all and he 
was fun to play with, but ideas were not his specialty. He was probably 
smart for a dinosaur. “I’m bored.” 

“Leave him alone, will you?” Comrade said. 

“He hasn’t said anything yet.” Stennie stretched and nudged me with 
his foot. “Say something.” He had legs like a horse: yellow skin stretched 
tight over long bones and stringy muscle. 

"Prosrees! He just had his genes twanked, you jack.” Comrade always 
took good care of me. Or tried to. “Remember what that’s like? He’s in 
damage control.” 

“Maybe I should go to socialization,” Stennie said. “Aren’t they having 
a dance this afternoon?” 

“You’re talking to me?” said the Alpha. “You haven’t earned enough 

MR. BOY 121 



learning credits to socialize. You’re a quiz behind and forty-five minutes 
short of E-class. You haven’t linked since . . 

“Just shut up and drive me over.” Stennie and the Alpha did not get 
along. He thought the car was too strict. “I’ll make up the plugging quiz, 
okay?” He probed a mess of empty juice boxes and snack wrappers with 
his foot. “Anyone see my comm anywhere?” 

Stennie’s schoolcomm was wedged behind my cushion. “You know,” 
I said, “I can’t take much more of this.” I leaned forward, wriggled it 
free and handed it over. 

“Of what, poputchik?” said Comrade. “Joyriding? Listening to the liz- 
ard here?” 

“Being stunted.” 

Stennie flipped up the screen of his comm and went on line with the 
school’s computer. “You guys help me, okay?” He retracted his claws and 
tapped at the oversized keyboard. 

“It’s extreme while you’re on the table,” I said, “but now I feel empty. 
Like I’ve lost myself” 

“You’ll get over it,” said Stennie. “First question: Brand name of the 
first wiseguys sold for home use?” 

“NEC-Bots, of course,” said Comrade. 

“Geneva? It got nuked, right?” 

"Da.” 

“Haile Selassie was that king of Egypt who the Marleys claim is god, 
right? Name the Cold Wars: Nicaragua, Angola . . . Korea was the first.” 
Typing was hard work for Stennie; he did not have enough fingers for 
it. “One was something like Venezuela. Or something.” 

“Sure it wasn’t Venice?” 

“Or Venus?” I said, but Stennie was not paying attention. 

“All right, I know that one. And that. The Sovs built the first space 
station. Ronald Reagan — he was the president who dropped the bomb?” 

Comrade reached inside of his coat and pulled out an envelope. “I got 
you something, Mr. Boy. A get well present for your collection.” 

I opened it and scoped a picture of a naked dead fat man on a stainless 
steel table. The print had a DI verification grid on it, which meant this 
was the real thing, not a composite. Just above the corpse’s left eye there 
was a neat hole. It was rimmed with purple which had faded to bruise 
blue. He had curly gray hair on his head and chest, skin the color of 
dried mayonnaise aiid a wonderfully complicated penis graft. He looked 
relieved to be dead. “Who was he?” I liked Comrade’s present. It was 
extreme. 

“CEO of Infoline. He had the wife, you know, the one who stole all the 
money so she could download herself into a computer.” 

I shivered as I stared at the dead man. I could hear myself breathing 


122 


JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



and feel the blood squirting through my arteries. “Didn’t they turn her 
off?” I said. This was the kind of stuff we were not even supposed to 
imagine, much less look at. Too bad they had cleaned him up. “How 
much did this cost me?” 

“You don’t want to know.” 

“Hey!” Stennie thumped his tail against the side of the car. “I’m taking 
a quiz here and you guys are drooling over pom. When was the First 
World Depression? 

“Who cares?” I slipped the picture back into the envelope and grinned 
at Comrade. 

“Well, let me see then.” Stennie snatched the envelope. “You know 
what I think, Mr. Boy? I think this corpse jag you’re on is kind of sick. 
Besides, you’re going to get in trouble if you let Comrade keep breaking 
laws. Isn’t this picture private?” 

“Privacy is twentieth century thinking. It’s all information, Stennie, 
and information should be accessible.” I held out my hand. “But if glas- 
nost bothers you, give it up.” I wiggled my fingers. 

Comrade snickered. Stennie pulled out the picture, glanced at it and 
hissed. “You’re scaring me, Mr. Boy.” 

His schoolcomm beeped as it posted his score on the quiz and he sailed 
the envelope back across the car at me. “Not Venezuela, Viet Nam. Hey, 
Truman dropped the plugging bomb. Reagan was the one who spent all 
the money. What’s wrong with you dumbscuts? Now I owe school another 
fifteen minutes.” 

“Hey, if you don’t make it look good, they’ll know you had help.” 
Comrade laughed. 

“What’s with this dance anyway? You don’t dance.” I picked Comrade’s 
present up and tucked it into my shirt pocket. “You find yourself a cush 
or something, lizard boy?” 

“Maybe.” Stennie could not blush but sometimes when he was em- 
barrassed the loose skin under his jaw quivered. Even though he had 
been reshaped into a dinosaur, he was still growing up. “Maybe I am 
getting a little. What’s it to you?” 

“If you’re getting it,” I said, “it’s got to be microscopic.” This was a bad 
sign. I was losing him to his dick, just like all the other pals. No way I 
wanted to start over with someone new. I had been alive for twenty-five 
years now. I was running out of things to say to thirteen-year-olds. 

As the Alpha pulled up to the school, I scoped the crowd waiting for 
the doors to open for third shift. Although there were a handful of stunted 
kids, a pair of gorilla brothers who were football stars and Freddy the 
Teddy, a bear who had furry hands instead of real paws, the majority of 
students at New Canaan High looked more or less normal. Most working 
stiffs thought that people who had their genes twanked were freaks. 


MR. BOY 


123 



“Come get me at 5:15,” Stennie told the Alpha. “In the meantime, take 
these guys wherever they want to go.” He opened the door. “You rest up, 
Mr. Boy, okay?” 

“What?” I was not paying attention. “Sure.” I had just seen the most 
beautiful girl in the world. 

She leaned against one of the concrete columns of the portico, chatting 
with a couple other kids. Her hair was long and nut-colored and the ends 
twinkled. She was wearing a loose black robe over mirror skintights. 
Her schoolcomm dangled from a strap around her wrist. She appeared 
to be seventeen, maybe eighteen. But of course, appearances could be 
deceiving. 

Girls had never interested me much, but I could not help but admire 
this one. “Wait, Stennie! Who’s that?” She saw me point at her. “With 
the hair?” 

“She’s new — has one of those names you can’t pronounce.” He showed 
me his teeth as he got out. “Hey Mr. Boy, you’re stunted. You haven’t 
got what she wants.” 

He kicked the door shut, lowered his head and crossed in front of the 
car. When he walked he looked like he was trying to squash a bug with 
each step. His snaky tail curled high behind him for balance, his twiggy 
little arms dangled. When the new girl saw him, she pointed and smiled. 
Or maybe she was pointing at me. 

“Where to?” said the car. 

“I don’t know.” I sank low into my seat and pulled out Comrade’s 
present again. “Home, I guess.” 

I was not the only one in my family with twanked genes. My mom was 
a three-quarters scale replica of the Statue of Liberty. Originally she 
wanted to be full-sized, but then she would have been the tallest thing 
in New Canaan, Connecticut. The town turned her down when she ap- 
plied for a zoning variance. Her lawyers and their lawyers sued and 
countersued for almost two years. Mom’s claim was that since she was 
born human, her freedom of form was protected by the Thirtieth Amend- 
ment. However, the form she wanted was a curtain of reshaped cells 
which would hang on a forty-two meter high ferroplastic skeleton. Her 
structure, said the planning board, was clearly subject to building codes 
and zoning laws. Eventually they reached an out-of-court settlement, 
which was why Mom was only as tall as an eleven story building. 

She complied with the town’s request for a setback of five hundred 
meters from Route 123. As Stennie’s Alpha drove us down the long 
driveway. Comrade broadcast the recognition code which told the robot 
sentries that we were okay. One thing Mom and the town agreed on from 
the start: no tourists. Sure, she loved publicity, but she was also very 


124 


JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



fragile. In some places her skin was only a centimeter thick. Chunks of 
ice falling from her crown could punch holes in her. 

The end of our driveway cut straight across the lawn to Mom’s granite- 
paved foundation pad. To the west of the plaza, directly behind her, was 
a utility building faced in ashlar that housed her support systems. Mom 
had been bioengineered to be pretty much self-sufficient. She was green 
not only to match the real Statue of Liberty but also because she was 
photosynthetic. All she needed was a yearly truckload of fertilizer, water 
from the well, and a hundred and fifty kilowatts of electricity a day. 
Except for emergency surgery, the only time she required maintenance 
was in the fall, when her outer cells tended to flake off and had to be 
swept up and carted away. 

Stennie’s Alpha dropped us off by the doorbone in the right heel and 
then drove off to do whatever cars do when nobody is using them. Mom’s 
greeter was waiting in the reception area inside the foot. 

“Peter.” She tried to hug me but I dodged out of her grasp. “How are 
you, Peter?” 

“Tired.” Even though Mom knew I did not like to be called that, I 
kissed the air near her cheek. Peter Cage was her name for me; I had 
given it up years ago. 

“You poor boy. Here, let me see you.” She held me at arm’s length and 
brushed her fingers against my cheek. “You don’t look a day over twelve. 
Oh, they do such good work — don’t you think?” She squeezed my shoulder. 
“Are you happy with it?” 

I think my mom meant well, but she never did understand me. Es- 
pecially when she talked to me with her greeter remote. I wormed out 
of her grip and fell back onto one of the couches. “What’s to eat?” 

“Doboys, noodles, fries — whatever you want.” She beamed at me and 
then bent over impulsively and gave me a kiss that I did not want. I 
never paid much attention to the greeter; she was lighter than air. She 
was always smiling and asking five questions in a row without waiting 
for an answer and flitting around the room. It wore me out just watching 
her. Naturally everything I said or did was cute, even if I was trying to 
be obnoxious. It was no fun being cute. Today Mom had her greeter 
wearing a dark blue dress and a very dumb white apron. The greeter’s 
umbilical was too short to stretch up to the kitchen. So why was she 
wearing an apron? “I’m really, really glad you’re home,” she said. 

“I’ll take some cinnamon doboys.” I kicked off my shoes and rubbed 
my bare feet through the dense black hair on the floor. “And a beer.” 

All of Mom’s remotes had different personalities. I liked Nanny all 
right; she was simple but at least she listened. The lovers were a chal- 
lenge because they were usually too busy looking into mirrors to notice 
me. Cook was as pretentious as a four star menu; the housekeeper had 


MR. BOY 


125 



all the charm of a vacuum cleaner. I had always wondered what it would 
be like to talk directly to Mom’s main brain up in the head, because then 
she would not be filtered through a remote. She would be herself. 

“Cook is making you some nice broth to go with your doboys,” said the 
greeter. “Nanny says you shouldn’t be eating dessert all the time.” 

“Hey, did I ask for broth?” 

At first Comrade had hung back while the greeter was fussing over 
me. Then he slid along the wrinkled pink walls of the reception room 
toward the plug where the greeter’s umbilical was attached. When she 
started in about the broth I saw him lean against the plug. Carelessly, 
you know? At the same time he stepped on the greeter’s umbilical, crimp- 
ing the furry black cord. She gasped and the smile flattened horribly on 
her face as if her lips were two ropes someone had suddenly yanked taut. 
Her head jerked toward the umbilical plug. 

“E-Excuse me.” She was twitching. 

“What?” Comrade glanced down at his foot as if it belonged to a 
stranger. “Oh, sorry.” He pushed away from the wall and strolled across 
the room toward us. Although he seemed apologetic, about half the heads 
on his window coat were laughing. 

'The greeter flexed her cheek muscles. “You’d better watch out for your 
toy, Peter,” she said. “It’s going to get you in trouble someday.” 

Mom did not like Comrade much, even though she had given him to 
me when I was first stunted. She got mad when I snuck him down to 
Manhattan a couple of years ago to have a chop job done on his behavioral 
regulators. For a while after the operation, he used to ask me before he 
broke the law. Now he was on his own. He got caught once and she 
warned me he was out of control. But she still threw money at the people 
until they went away. 

“Trouble?” I said. “Sounds like fun.” I thought we were too rich for 
trouble. I was the trust baby of a trust baby; we had vintage money and 
lots of it. I stood and Comrade picked up my shoes for me. “And he’s not 
a toy; he’s my best friend.” I put my arms around his shoulder. “Tell 
Cook I’ll eat in my rooms.” 

I was tired after the long climb up the circular stairs to Mom’s chest. 
When the roombrain sensed I had come in, it turned on all the electronic 
windows and blinked my message indicator. One reason I still lived in 
my mom was that she kept out of my rooms. She had promised me total 
security and I believed her. Actually I doubted that she cared enough to 
pry, although she could easily have tapped my windows. I was safe from 
her remotes up here, even the housekeeper. Comrade did everything for 
me. 

I sent him for supper, perched on the edge of the bed, and cleared the 

126 JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



nearest window of army ants foraging for meat through some Angolan 
jungle. The first message in the queue was from a gray-haired stiff wear- 
ing a navy blue corporate uniform. “Hello, Mr. Cage. My name is Weldon 
Montross and I’m with Datasafe. I’d like to arrange a meeting with you 
at your convenience. Call my DI number, 408-966-3286. I hope to hear 
from you soon.” 

“What the hell is Datasafe?” 

The roombrain ran a search. “Datasafe offers services in encr 5 q)tion 
and information security. It was incorporated in the state of Delaware 
in 2013. Estimated billings last year were 340 million dollars. Head- 
quarters are in San Jose, California, with branch offices in White Plains, 
New York and Chevy Chase, Maryland. Foreign offices. . . .” 

“Are they trying to sell me something or what?” 

The room did not offer an answer. “Delete,” I said. “Next?” 

Weldon Montross was back again, looking exactly as he had before. 
I wondered if he were using a virtual image. “Hello, Mr. Cage. I’ve just 
discovered that you’ve been admitted to the Thayer Clinic for rejuven- 
ation therapy. Believe me when I say that I very much regret having to 
bother you during your convalescence and I would not do so if this were 
not a matter of importance. Would you please contact Department of 
Identification number 408-966-3286 as soon as you’re able?” 

“You’re a pro, Weldon, I’ll say that for you.” Prying client information 
out of the Thayer Clinic was not easy, but then the guy was no doubt 
some kind of op. He was way too polite to be a salesman. What did 
Datasafe want with me? “Any more messages from him?” 

“No,” said the roombrain. 

“Well, delete this one too and if he calls back tell him I’m too busy 
unless he wants to tell me what he’s after.” I stretched out on my bed. 
“Next?” The gel mattress shivered as it took my weight. 

Happy Lurdane was having a smash party on the twentieth but Happy 
was a boring cush and there was a bill from the pet store for the iguanas 
that I paid and a warning from the SPCA that I deleted and a special 
offer for preferred customers from my favorite fireworks company that 
I saved to look at later and my dad was about to ask for another loan 
when I paused him and deleted and last of all there was a message from 
Stennie, time stamped ten minutes ago. 

“Hey Mr. Boy, if you’re feeling better I’ve lined up a VE party for 
tonight.” He did not quite fit into the school’s telelink booth; all I could 
see was his toothy face and the long yellow curve of his neck. “Bunch of 
us have reserved some time on Playroom. Come in disguise. That new 
kid said she’d link, so scope her yourself if you’re so hot. I found out her 
name but it’s kind of unpronounceable. Tree-something Joplin. Anyway 


MR. BOY 


127 



it’s at seven, meet on channel 17, password is warhead. Hey, did you 
send my car back yet? Later.” He faded. 

“Sounds like fun.” Comrade kicked the doorbone open and backed 
through, balancing a tray loaded with soup and fresh doboys and a mug 
of cold beer. “Are we going?” He set it onto the nightstand next to my 
bed. 

“Maybe.” I yawned. It felt good to be in my own bed. “Flush the damn 
soup, would you?” I reached over for a doboy and felt something crinkle 
in my jacket pocket. I pulled out the picture of the dead CEO. About the 
only thing I did not like about it was that the eyes were shut. You feel 
dirtier when the corpse stares back. “This is one sweet hunk of meat. 
Comrade.” I propped the picture beside the tray. “How did you get it, 
anyway? Must have taken some operating.” 

“Three days worth. Encryption wasn’t all that tough but there was lots 
of it.” Comrade admired the picture with me as he picked up the bowl 
of soup. “I ended up buying about ten hours from IBM to crack the file. 
Kind of pricey but since you were getting stunted, I had nothing else to 
do.” 

“You see the messages from that security op?” I bit into a doboy. 
“Maybe you were a little sloppy.” The hot cinnamon scent tickled my 
nose. 

"Ya v’rot ego ebal!” He laughed. “So some stiff is cranky? Plug him if 
he can’t take a joke.” 

I said nothing. Comrade could be a pain sometimes. Of course I loved 
the picture, but he really should have been more careful. He had made 
a mess and left it for me to clean up. Just what I needed. I knew I would 
only get mad if I thought about it, so I changed the subject. “Well, do 
you think she’s cute?” 

“What’s-her-face Joplin?” Comrade turned abruptly toward the bath- 
room. “Sure, for a perdunya,” he said over his shoulder. “Why not?” 
Talking about girls made him snippy. I think he was afraid of them. 

I brought my army ants back onto the window; they were swarming 
over a lump with brown fur. Thinking about him hanging on my elbow 
when I met this Tree-something Joplin made me feel weird. I listened 
as he poured the soup down the toilet. I was not myself at all. Getting 
stunted changes you; no one can predict how. I chugged the beer and 
rolled over to take a nap. It was the first time I had ever thought of 
leaving Comrade behind. 

‘WE party, Mr. Boy.” Comrade nudged me awake. “Are we going or 
not?” 

“Huh?” My gut still ached from the rejuvenation and I woke up mean 
enough to chew glass. “What do you mean we?” 

128 


JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



“Nothing.” Comrade had that blank look he always put on so I would 
not know what he was thinking. Still I could tell he was disappointed. 
“Are you going then?” he said. 

I stretched — ouch! “Yeah, sure, get my joysuit.” My bones felt brittle 
as candy. “And stop acting sorry for yourself” This nasty mood had 
momentum; it swept me past any regrets. “No way I’m going to lie here 
all night watching you pretend you have feelings to hurt.” 

"Tak tochno.” He saluted and went straight to the closet. I got out of 
bed and hobbled to the bathroom. 

“This is a costume party, remember,” Comrade called. “What are you 
wearing? 

“Whatever.” Even his efficiency irked me; sometimes he did too much. 
“You decide.” I needed to get away from him for a while. 

Playroom was a new virtual environment service on our local net. If 
you wanted to throw an electronic party at Versailles or Monticello or 
San Simeon, all you had to do was link — if you could get a reservation. 

I came back to the bedroom and Comrade stepped up behind me, hold- 
ing the joysuit. I shrugged into it, velcroed the front seam and eyed 
myself in the nearest window. He had synthesized some kid-sized armor 
in the German Gothic style. My favorite. It was made of polished silver, 
with great fluting and scalloping. He had even programmed a little glow 
into the image so that on the window I looked like a walking night light. 
There was an armet helmet with a red ostrich plume; the visor was 
tipped up so I could see my face. I raised my arm and the joysuit translated 
the movement to the window so that my armored image waved back. 

“Try a few steps,” he said. 

Although I could move easily in the lightweight joysuit, the motion 
interpreter made walking in the video armor seem realistically awkward. 
Comrade had scored the sound effects, too. Metal hinges rasped, chain 
mail rattled softly, and there was a satisfying clunk whenever my foot 
hit the floor. 

“Great.” I clenched my fist in approval. I was awake now and in control 
of my temper. I wanted to make up but Comrade was not taking the hint. 
I could never quite figure out whether he was just acting like a machine 
or whether he really did not care how I treated him. 

“They’re starting.” All the windows in the room lit up with Pla 3 rroom’s 
welcome screen. “You want privacy, so I’m leaving. No one will bother 
you.” 

“Hey Comrade, you don’t have to go . . .” 

But he had already left the room. Playroom prompted me to identify 
myself. “Mr. Boy,” I said, “Department of Identification number 203-966- 
2445. I’m looking for channel 17; the password is warhead.” 


MR. BOY 


129 



A brass band started playing “Hail to the Chief’ as the title screen lit 
the windows: 

The White House 
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue 
Washington, DC, USA 
copyright 2096, Playroom Presentations 
REPRODUCTION OR REUSE STRICTLY PROHIBITED 
and then I was looking at a wraparound view of a VE ballroom. A caption 
bar opened at the top of the windows and a message scrolled across. This 
is the famous East Room, the largest room in the main house. It is used 
for press conferences, public receptions and entertainments. I lowered my 
visor and entered the simulation. 

The East Room was decorated in bone white and gold; three chandeliers 
hung like cut glass mushrooms above the huge parquet floor. A band 
played skitter at one end of the room but no one was dancing yet. The 
band was Warhead, according to their drum set. I had never heard of 
them. Someone’s disguise? I turned and the joysuit changed the view on 
the windows. Just ahead Satan was chatting with a forklift and a rhi- 
noceros. Beyond some blue cartoons were teasing Johnny America. There 
was not much furniture in the room, a couple of benches, an ugly piano, 
and some life-sized paintings of George and Martha. George looked like 
he had just been peeled off a cash card. I stared at him too long and the 
closed caption bar informed me that the painting had been painted by 
Gilbert Stuart and was the only White House object dating from the 
mansion’s first occupancy in 1800 . 

“Hey,” I said to a girl who was on fire. “How do I get rid of the plugging 
tour guide?” 

“Can’t,” she said. “When Playroom found out we were kids they turned 
on all their educational crap and there’s no override. I kind of don’t think 
they want us back.” 

“Dumbscuts.” I scoped the room for something that might be Stennie. 
No luck. “I like the way your hair is burning.” Now that it was too late, 
I was sorry I had to make idle party chat. 

“Thanks.” When she tossed her head, sparks flared and crackled. “My 
mom helped me program it.” 

“So, I’ve never been to the White House. Is there more than this?” 

“Sure,” she said. “We’re supposed to have pretty much the whole first 
floor. Unless they shorted us. You wouldn’t be Stone Kinkaid in there, 
would you?” 

“No, not really.” Even through the voice was disguised, I could tell this 
was Happy Lurdane. I edged away from her. “I’m going to check the 
other rooms now. Later.” 

“If you run into Stone, tell him I’m looking for him.” 


130 


JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



I left the East Room and found myself in a long marble passageway 
with a red carpet. A dog skeleton trotted toward me. Or maybe it was 
supposed to be a sheep. I waved and went through a door on the other 
side. 

Everyone in the Red Room was standing on the ceiling; I knew I had 
found Stennie. Even though what they see is only a simulation, most 
people lock into the perceptual field of a VE as if it were real. Stand on 
your head long enough — even if only in your imagination — and you get 
airsick. It took kilohours of practice to learn to compensate. Upside down 
was one of Stennie’s trademark ways of showing off. 

The Red Room is an intimate parlor in the American Empire style of 
1815-20 . . . 

“Hi,” I said. I hopped over the wainscotting and walked up the silk- 
covered wall to join the three of them. 

“You’re wearing German armor.” When the boy in blue grinned at me, 
his cheeks dimpled. He was wearing shorts and white knee socks, a navy 
sweater over a white shirt. “Augsburg?” said Little Boy Blue. Fine blond 
hair drooped from beneath his tweed cap. 

“Try Wolf of Landshut,” I said. Stennie and I had spent a lot of time 
fighting VE wars in full armor. “Nice shorts.” Stennie’s costume re- 
minded me of Christopher Robin. Terminally cute. 

“It’s not fair,” said the snowman, who I did not recognize. “He says 
this is what he actually looks like.” The snowman was standing in a 
puddle which was dripping onto the rug below us. Great effect. 

“No,” said Stennie, “what I said was I would look like this if I hadn’t 
done something about it, okay?” 

I had not known Stennie before he was a dinosaur. “No wonder you 
got twanked.” I wished I could have saved this image, but Playroom was 
copy-protected. 

“You’ve been twanked? No joke?” The great homed owl ruffled in 
alarm. She had a girl’s voice. “I know it’s none of my business, but I don’t 
understand why anyone would do it. Especially a kid. I mean, what’s 
wrong with good old fashioned surgery? And you can be whoever you 
want in a VE.” She paused, waiting for someone to agree with her. No 
help. “Okay, so I don’t understand. But when you mess with your genes, 
you change who you are. I mean, don’t you like who you are? I do.” 

“We’re so happy for you.” Stennie scowled. “What is this, mental health 
week?” 

“We’re rich,” I said. “We can afford to hate ourselves.” 

“This may sound rude . . .” The owl’s big blunt head swivelled from 
Stennie to me. “. . . but I think that’s sad.” 

“Yeah well, we’ll try to work up some tears for you, birdie,” Stennie 
said. 


MR. BOY 


131 




Silence. In the East Room, the band turned the volume up. 

“Anyway, I’ve got to be going.” The owl shook herself. “Hanging upside- 
down is fine for bats, but not for me. Later.” She let go of her perch and 
swooped out into the hall. The snowman turned to watch her go. 

“You’re driving them off, young man.” I patted Stennie on the head. 
“Come on now, be nice.” 

“Nice makes me puke.” 

“You do have a bit of an edge tonight.” I had trouble imagining this 
dainty little brat as my best friend. “Better watch out you don’t cut 
someone.” 

The dog skeleton came to the doorway and called up to us. “We’re 
supposed to dance now.” 

“About time.” Stennie fell off the ceiling like a drop of water and 
splashed headfirst onto the beige Persian rug. His image went all muddy 
for a moment and then he reformed, upright and unharmed. “Going to 
skitter, tin man?” 

“I need to talk to you for a moment,” the snowman murmured. 

“You need to?” I said. 

“Dance, dance, dance,” sang Stennie. “Later.” He swerved after the 
skeleton out of the room. 

The snowman said, “It’s about a possible theft of information.” 

Right then was when I should have slammed it into reverse. Caught 
up with Stennie or maybe faded from Playroom altogether. But all I did 
was raise my hands over my head. “You got me, snowman; I confess. But 
society is to blame, too, isn’t it? You will tell the judge to go easy on me? 
I’ve had a tough life.” 

“This is serious.” 

“You’re Weldon — what’s your name?” Down the hall, I could hear the 
thud of Warhead’s bass line. “Montross.” 

“I’ll come to the point, Peter.” The only acknowledgment he made was 
to drop the kid voice. “The firm I represent provides information security 
services. Last week someone operated on the protected database of one 
of our clients. We have reason to believe that a certified photograph was 
accessed and copied. What can you tell me about this?” 

“Not bad, Mr. Montross sir. But if you were as good as you think you 
are, you’d know my name isn’t Peter. It’s Mr. Boy. And since nobody 
invited you to this party, maybe you’d better tell me now why I shouldn’t 
just go ahead and have you deleted?” 

“I know that you were undergoing genetic therapy at the time of the 
theft so you could not have been directly responsible. That’s in your 
favor. However, I also know that you can help me clear this matter up. 
And you need to do that, son, just as quickly as you can. Otherwise there’s 
big trouble coming.” 


MR. BOY 


133 



“What are you going to do, tell my mommy?” My blood started to pump; 
I was coming back to life. 

“This is my offer. It’s not negotiable. You let me sweep your files for 
this image. You turn over any hardcopies you’ve made and you instruct 
your wiseguy to let me do a spot reprogramming, during which I will 
erase his memory of this incident. After that, we’ll consider the matter 
closed.” 

“Why don’t I just drop my pants and bend over while I’m at it?” 

“Look, you can pretend if you want, but you’re not a kid anymore. 
You’re twenty-five years old. I don’t believe for a minute that you’re as 
thick as your friends out there. If you think about it, you’ll realize that 
you can’t fight us. The fact that I’m here and I know what I know means 
that all your personal information systems are already tapped. I’m an 
op, son. I could wipe your files clean any time and I will, if it comes to 
that. However, my orders are to be thorough. The only way I can be sure 
I have everything is if you cooperate.” 

“You’re not even real, are you, Montross? I’ll bet you’re nothing but 
cheesy old code. I’ve talked to elevators with more personality.” 

“The offer is on the table.” 

“Stick it!” 

The owl flew back into the room, braked with outstretched wings and 
caught onto the armrest of the Dolley Madison sofa. “Oh, you’re still 
here,” she said, noticing us. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. . . .” 

“Wait there,” I said. “I’m coming right down.” 

“I’ll be in touch,” said the snowman. “Let me know just as soon as you 
change your mind.” He faded. 

I flipped backward off the ceiling and landed in front of her; my video 
armor rang from the impact. “Owl, you just saved the evening.” I knew 
I was showing off, but just then I was willing to forgive myself “Thanks.” 

“You’re welcome, I guess.” She edged away from me, moving with 
precise little birdlike steps toward the top of the couch. “But all I was 
trying to do was escape the band.” 

“Bad?” 

“And loud.” Her ear tufts flattened. “Do you think shutting the door 
would help?” 

“Sure. Follow me. We can shut lots of doors.” When she hesitated, I 
flapped my arms like silver wings. Actually, Montross had done me a 
favor; when he threatened me some inner clock had begun an adrenalin 
tick. If this was trouble, I wanted more. I felt twisted and dangerous and 
I did not care what happened next. Maybe that was why the owl flitted 
after me as I walked into the next room. 

The sumptuous State Dining Room can seat about 130 for formal din- 

134 JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



Tiers. The white and gold decor dates from the administration of Theodore 
Roosevelt. 

The owl glided over to the banquet table. I shut the door behind me. 
“Better?” Warhead still pounded on the walls. 

“A little.” She settled on a huge bronze dor6 centerpiece with a mirrored 
surface. “Fm going soon anyway.” 

“Why?” 

“The band stinks, I don’t know anyone and I hate these stupid dis- 
guises.” 

“Fm Mr. Boy.” I raised my visor and grinned at her. “All right? Now 
you know someone.” 

She tucked her wings into place and fixed me with her owlish stare. 
“I don’t like VEs much.” 

“They take some getting used to.” 

“Why bother?” she said. “I mean, if an 5 d;hing can happen in a simu- 
lation, nothing matters. And I feel dumb standing in a room all alone 
jumping up and down and flapping my arms. Besides, this joysuit is hot 
and Fm renting it by the hour.” 

“The trick is not to look at yourself,” I said. “Just watch the screens 
and use your imagination.” 

“Reality is less work. You look like a little kid.” 

“Is that a problem?” 

“Mr. Boy? What kind of name is that anyway?” 

I wished she would blink. “A made up name. But then all names are 
made up, aren’t they?” 

“Didn’t I see you at school Wednesday? You were the one who dropped 
off the dinosaur.” 

“My friend Stennie.” I pulled out a chair and sat facing her. “Who you 
probably hate because he’s twanked.” 

“That was him on the ceiling, wasn’t it? Listen, Fm sorry about what 
I said. Fm new here. I’d never met anyone like him before I came to New 
Canaan. I mean. I’d heard of reshaping and all — getting twanked. But 
where I used to live, everybody was pretty much the same.” 

“Where was that. Squirrel Crossing, Nebraska?” 

“Close.” She laughed. “Elkhart; it’s in Indiana.” 

The reckless ticking in my head slowed. Talking to her made it easy 
to forget about Montross. “You want to leave the party?” I said. “We 
could go into discreet.” 

“Just us?” She sounded doubtful. “Right now?” 

“Why not? You said you weren’t staying. We could get rid of these 
disguises. And the music.” 

She was silent for a moment. Maybe people in Elkhart, Indiana, did 

MR. BOY 135 



not ask one another into discreet unless they had met in Sunday school 
or the Four H Club. 

“Okay,” she said finally, “but I’ll enable. What’s your DI?” 

I gave her my number. 

“Be back in a minute.” 

I cleared Playroom from my screens. The message Enabling discreet 
mode flashed. I decided not to change out of the joysuit; instead I called 
up my wardrobe menu and chose an image of myself wearing black 
baggies. The loose folds and padded shoulders helped hide the scrawny 
little boy’s body. 

The message changed. Discreet mode enabled. Do you accept, yesinol 

“Sure,” I said. 

She was sitting naked in the middle of a room filled with tropical 
plants. Her skin was the color of cinnamon. She had freckles on her 
shoulders and across her breasts. Her hair tumbled down the curve of 
her spine; the ends glowed like embers in a breeze. Sbe clutched her legs 
close to her and gave me a curious smile. Teenage still life. We were 
alone and secure. No one could tap us while we were in discreet. We 
could say anything we wanted. I was too croggled to speak. 

“You are a little kid,” she said. 

I did not tell her that what she was watching was an enhanced image, 
a virtual me. “Uh . . . well, not really.” I was glad Stennie could not see 
me. Mr. Boy at a loss — a first. “Sometimes I’m not sure what I am. I 
guess you’re not going to like me either. I’ve been stunted a couple of 
times. I’m really twenty-five years old.” 

She frowned. “You keep deciding I won’t like people. Why?” 

“Most people are against genetic surgery. Probably because they 
haven’t got the money.” 

“Myself, I wouldn’t do it. Still, just because you did doesn’t mean I hate 
you.” She gestured for me to sit. “But my parents would probably be 
horrified. They’re realists, you know.” 

“No fooling?” I could not help but chuckle. “That explains a lot.” Like 
why she had an attitude about twanking. And why she thought VEs 
were dumb. And why she was naked and did not seem to care. According 
to hard-core realists, first came clothes, then jewelry, fashion, makeup, 
plastic surgery, skin tints, and hey jack, here we are up to our eyeballs 
in the delusions of 2096. Gene twanking, VE addicts, people downloading 
themselves into computers — better never to have started. They wanted 
to turn back to worn-out twentieth century modes. “But you’re no realist,” 
I said. “Look at your hair.” 

She shook her head and the ends twinkled. “You like it?” 

“It’s extreme. But realists don’t decorate!” 

“Then maybe I’m not a realist. My parents let me try lots of stuff they 

136 JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



wouldn’t do themselves, like buying hairworks or linking to VEs. They’re 
afraid I’d leave otherwise.” 

“Would you?” 

She shrugged. “So what’s it like to get stunted? I’ve heard it hurts.” 

I told her how sometimes I felt as if there were broken glass in my 
joints and how my bones ached and — more showing off — about the blood 
I would find on the toilet paper. Then I mentioned something about Mom. 
She had heard of Mom, of course. She asked about my dad and I explained 
how Mom paid him to stay away but that he kept running out of money. 
She wanted to know if I was working or still going to school and I made 
up some stuff about courses in history I was taking from Yale. Actually 
I had faded after my first semester. Couple of years ago. I did not have 
time to link to some boring college; I was too busy playing with Comrade 
and Stennie. But I still had an account at Yale. 

“So that’s who I am.” I was amazed at how little I had lied. “Who are 
you?” 

She told me that her name was Treemonisha but her friends called 
her Tree. It was an old family name; her great-great-grandsomething- 
or-other had been a composer named Scott Joplin. Treemonisha was the 
name of his opera. 

I had to force myself not to stare at her breasts when she talked. “You 
like operaT’ I said. 

“My dad says I’ll grow into it.” She made a face. “I hope not.” 

The Joplins were a franchise family; her mom and dad had just been 
transferred to the Green Dream, a plant shop in the Elm Street Mall. 
To hear her talk, you would think she had ordered them from the Good 
Fairy. They had been married for twenty-two years and were still to- 
gether. She had a brother, Fidel, who was twelve. They all lived in the 
greenhouse next to the shop where they grew most of their food and 
where flowers were always in bloom and where everybody loved everyone 
else. Nice life for a bunch of mall drones. So why was she thinking of 
leaving? 

“You should stop by sometime,” she said. 

“Sometime,” I said. “Sure.” 

For hours after we faded, I kept remembering things about her I had 
not realized I had noticed. The fine hair on her legs. The curve of her 
eyebrows. The way her hands moved when she was excited. 

It was Stennie’s fault: after the Playroom party he started going to 
school almost every day. Not just linking to E-class with his comm, but 
actually showing up. We knew he had more than remedial reading on 
his mind, but no matter how much we teased, he would not talk about 
his mysterious new cush. Before he fell in love we used to joyride in his 


MR. BOY 


137 



Alpha afternoons. Now Comrade and I had the car all to ourselves. Not 
as much fun. 

We had already dropped Stennie off when I spotted Treemonisha wait- 
ing for the bus. I waved, she came over. The next thing I knew we had 
another passenger on the road to nowhere. Comrade stared vacantly out 
the window as we pulled onto South Street; he did not seem pleased with 
the company. 

“Have you been out to the reservoir?” I said. “There are some extreme 
houses out there. Or we could drive over to Greenwich and look at yachts.” 

“I haven’t been anywhere yet, so I don’t care,” she said. “By the way, 
you don’t go to college.” She was not accusing me or even asking — merely 
stating a fact. 

“Why do you say that?” I said. 

“Fidel told me.” 

I wondered how her twelve year old brother could know anything at 
all about me. Rumors maybe, or just guessing. Since she did not seem 
mad, I decided to tell the truth. 

“He’s right,” I said, “I lied. I have an account at Yale but I haven’t 
linked for months. Hey, you can’t live without telling a few lies. At least 
I don’t discriminate. I’ll lie to anyone, even myself” 

“You’re bad.” A smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. “So what 
do you do then?” 

“I drive around a lot.” I waved at the interior of Stennie’s car. “Let’s 
see ... I go to parties. I buy stuff and use it.” 

“Fidel says you’re rich.” 

“I’m going to have to meet this Fidel. Does money make a difference?” 

When she nodded, her hairworks twinkled. Comrade gave me a know- 
ing glance but I paid no attention. I was trying to figure out how she 
could make insults sound like compliments when I realized we were 
flirting. The idea took me by surprise. Flirting. 

“Do you have any music?” Treemonisha said. 

The Alpha asked what groups she liked and so we listened to some 
mindless dance hits as we took the circle route around the Laurel Res- 
ervoir. 'Treemonisha told me about how she was sick of her parents’ store 
and rude customers and especially the dumb Green Dream uniform. 
“Back in Elkhart, Daddy used to make me wear it to school. Can you 
believe that? He said it was good advertising. When we moved, I told 
him either the khakis went or I did.” 

She had a yellow and orange dashiki over midnight blue skintights. 
“I like your clothes,” I said. “You have taste.” 

“Thanks.” She bobbed her head in time to the music. “I can’t afford 
much because I can’t get an outside job because I have to work for my 
parents. It makes me mad, sometimes. I mean, franchise life is fine for 


138 


JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



Mom and Dad; they’re happy being tucked in every night by GD, Inc. 
But I want more. Thrills, chills — ^you know, adventure. No one has ad- 
ventures in the mall.” 

As we drove, I showed her the log castle, the pyramids, the private 
train that pulled sleeping cars endlessly around a two mile track and 
the marble bunker where Sullivan, the assassinated president, still lived 
on in computer memory. Comrade kept busy acting bored. 

“Can we go see your mom?” said Treemonisha. “All the kids at school 
tell me she’s awesome.” 

Suddenly Comrade was interested in the conversation. I was not sure 
what the kids at school were talking about. Probably they wished they 
had seen Mom but I had never asked any of them over — except for Sten- 
nie. 

“Not a good idea.” I shook my head. “She’s more flimsy than she looks, 
you know, and she gets real nervous if strangers just drop by. Or even 
friends.” 

“I just want to look. I won’t get out of the car.” 

“Well,” said Comrade, “if she doesn’t get out of the car, who could she 
hurt?” 

I scowled at him. He knew how paranoid Mom was. She was not going 
to like Treemonisha anyway, but certainly not if I brought her home 
without warning. “Let me work on her, okay?” I said to Treemonisha. 
“One of these days. I promise.” 

She pouted for about five seconds and then laughed at my expression. 
When I saw Comrade’s smirk, I got angry. He was just sitting there 
watching us. Looking to cause trouble. Later there would be wisecracks. 
I had had about enough of him and his attitude. 

By that time the Alpha was heading up High Ridge Road toward 
Stamford. “I’m hungry,” I said. “Stop at the 7-11 up ahead.” I pulled a 
cash card out and flipped it at him. “Go buy us some doboys.” 

I waited until he disappeared into the store and then ordered Stennie’s 
car to drive on. 

“Hey!” Treemonisha twisted in her seat and looked back at the store. 
“What are you doing?” 

“Ditching him.” 

“Why? Won’t he be mad?” 

“He’s got my card; he’ll call a cab.” 

“But that’s mean.” 

“So?” 

Treemonisha thought about it. “He doesn’t say much, does he?” She 
did not seem to know what to make of me — which I suppose was what 
I wanted. “At first I thought he was kind of like your teddy bear. Have 
you seen those big ones that keep little kids out of trouble?” 


MR. BOY 


139 



“He’s just a wiseguy.” 

“Have you had him long?” 

“Maybe too long.” 

I could not think of anything to say after that so we sat quietly listening 
to the music. Even though he was gone, Comrade was still aggravating 
me. 

“Were you really hungry?” Treemonisha said finally. “Because I was. 
Think there’s something in the fridge?” 

I waited for the Alpha to tell us but it said nothing. I slid across the 
seat and opened the refrigerator door. Inside was a sheet of paper. “Dear 
Mr. Boy,” it said. “If this was a bomb you and Comrade would be dead 
and the problem would be solved. Let’s talk soon. Weldon Montross.” 

“What’s that?” 

I felt the warm flush that I always got from good corpse porn and for 
a moment I could not speak. “Practical joke,” I said, crumpling the paper. 
“Too bad he doesn’t have a sense of humor.” 

Push-ups. Ten, eleven. 

“Uh-oh. Look at this,” said Comrade. 

“I’m busy!” Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen . . . sixteen . . . seven. . . . 
Dizzy, I slumped and rested my cheek against the warm floor. I could 
feel Mom’s pulse beneath the tough skin. It was no good. I would never 
get muscles this way. There was only one fix for my skinny arms and 
bony shoulders. Grow up, Mr. Boy. 

"Yayebou! You really should scope this,” said Comrade. “Very spooky.” 

I pulled myself onto the bed to see why he was bothering me; he had 
been pretty tame since I had stranded him at the 7-11. Most of the 
windows showed the usual: army ants next to old war movies next to 
feeding time from the Bronx Zoo’s reptile house. But Firenet, which 
provided twenty -four hour coverage of killer fires from around the world, 
had been replaced with a picture of a morgue. There were three naked 
bodies, shrouds pulled back for identification: a fat gray-haired CEO with 
a purple hole over his left eye. Comrade, and me. 

“You look kind of dead,” said Comrade. 

My tongue felt thick. “Where’s it coming from?” 

“Viruses all over the system,” he said. “Probably Montross.” 

“You know about him?” The image on the window changed back to a 
barridas fire in Lima. 

“He’s been in touch.” Comrade shrugged. “Made his offer.” 

Crying women watched as the straw walls of their huts peeled into 
flame and floated away. 

“Oh.” I did not know what to say. I wanted to reassure him, but this 

140 JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



was serious. Montross was invading my life and I had no idea how to 
fight back. “Well, don’t talk to him anymore.” 

“Okay.” Comrade grinned. “He’s dull as a spoon anyway.” 

“I bet he’s a simulation. What else would a company like Datasafe 
use? You can’t trust real people.” I was still thinking about what I would 
look like dead. “Whatever, he’s kind of scary.” I shivered, worried and 
aroused at the same time. “He’s slick enough to operate on Playroom. 
And now he’s hijacking windows right here in my own mom.” I should 
probably have told Comrade then about the note in the fridge, but we 
were still not talking about that day. 

“He tapped into Playroom?” Comrade fitted input clips to the spikes 
on his neck, linked and played back the house files. "Zayehees. He was 
already here then. He piggybacked on with you.” Comrade slapped his 
leg. “I can’t understand how he beat my security so easily.” 

The roombrain flicked the message indicator. “Stennie’s calling,” it 
said. 

“Pick up,” I said. 

“Hi, it’s that time again.” Stennie was alone in his car. “I’m on my 
way over to give you jacks a thrill.” He pushed his triangular snout up 
to the camera and licked at the lens. “Doing anything?” 

“Not really. Sitting around.” 

“I’ll fix that. Five minutes.” He faded. 

Comrade was staring at nothing. 

“Look Comrade, you did your best,” I said. “I’m not mad at you.” 

“Too plugging easy.” He shook his head as if I had missed the point. 

“What I don’t understand is why Montross is so cranky anyway. It’s 
just a picture of meat.” 

“Maybe he’s not really dead.” 

“Sure he is,” I said. “You can’t fake a verification grid.” 

“No, but you can fake a corpse.” 

“You know something?” 

“If I did I wouldn’t tell you,” said Comrade. “You have enough problems 
already. Like how do we explain this to your mom?” 

“We don’t. Not yet. Let’s wait him out. Sooner or later he’s got to realize 
that we’re not going to use his picture for anything. I mean if he’s that 
nervous. I’ll even give it back. I don’t care anymore. You hear that 
Montross, you dumbscut? We’re harmless. Get out of our lives!” 

“It’s more than the picture now,” said Comrade. “It’s me. I found the 
way in.” He was careful to keep his expression blank. 

I did not know what to say to him. No way Montross would be satisfied 
erasing only the memory of the operation. He would probably reconnect 
Comrade’s regulators to bring him back under control. Turn him to pud- 
ding. He would be just another wiseguy, like anyone else could own. I 


MR. BOY 


141 



was surprised that Comrade did not ask me to promise not to hand him 
over. Maybe he just assumed I would stand by him. 

We did not hear Stennie coming until he sprang into the room. 

“Have fun or die!” He was clutching a plastic gun in his spindly hand 
which he aimed at my head. 

“Stennie, no." 

He fired as I rolled across the bed. The jellybee buzzed by me and 
squished against one of the windows. It was a purple and immediately 
I smelled the tang of artificial grape flavor. The splatter on the wrinkled 
wall pulsed and split in two, emitting a second burst of grapeness. The 
two halves oozed in opposite directions, shivered and divided again. 

“Fun extremist!” He shot Comrade with a cherry as he dove for the 
closet. “Dance!” 

I bounced up and down on the bed, timing my move. He fired a green 
at me that missed. Comrade, meanwhile, gathered himself up as zits of 
red jellybee squirmed across his window coat. He barreled out of the 
closet into Stennie, knocking him sideways. I sprang on top of them and 
wrestled the gun away. Stennie was paralyzed with laughter. I had to 
giggle too, in part because now I could put off talking to Comrade about 
Montross. 

By the time we untangled ourselves, the jellybees had faded. “Set for 
twelve generations before they all die out,” Stennie said as he settled 
himself on the bed. “So what’s this my car tells me, you’ve been giving 
free rides? Is this the cush with the name?” 

“None of your business. You never tell me about your cush.” 

“Okay. Her name is Janet Hoyt.” 

“Is it?” He caught me off guard again. 'Twice in one day, a record. 
“Comrade, let’s see this prize.” 

Comrade linked to the roombrain and ran a search. “Got her.” He 
called Janet Hoyt’s DI file to screen and her face ballooned across an 
entire window. 

She was a tanned blue-eyed blonde with the kind of off-the-shelf looks 
that med students slapped onto rabbits in genoplasty courses. Nothing 
on her face said she was different from any other ornamental moron 
fresh from the OR — not a dimple or a mole, not even a freckle. “You’re 
ditching me for her?” It took all the imagination of a potato chip to be 
as pretty as Janet Hoyt. “Stennie, she’s generic.” 

“Now wait a minute,” said Stennie. “If we’re going to play critic, let’s 
scope your cush, too.” 

Without asking. Comrade put 'Tree’s DI photo next to Janet’s. I realized 
he was still mad at me because of her; he was only pretending not to 
care. “She’s not my cush,” I said, but no one was listening. 


142 


JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



Stennie leered at her for a moment. “She’s a stiff, isn’t she?” he said. 
“She has that hungry look.” 

Seeing him standing there in front of the two huge faces on the wall, 
I felt like I was peeping on a stranger — that I was a stranger, too. I could 
not imagine how the two of us had come to this: Stennie and Mr. Boy 
with cashes. We were growing up. A frightening thought. Maybe next 
Stennie would get himself untwanked and really look like he had on 
Playroom. Then where would I be? 

“Janet wants me to plug her,” Stennie said. 

“Right, and I’m the queen of Brooklyn.” 

“I’m old enough, you know.” He thumped his tail against the floor. 

“You’re a dinosaur!” 

“Hey, just because I got twanked doesn’t mean my dick fell off.” 

“So do it then.” 

“I’m going to. I will, okay? But . . this is no good.” Stennie waved 
impatiently at Comrade. “I can’t think with them watching me.” He 
nodded at the windows. “Turn them off already.” 

“N’ye pizdil” Comrade wiped the two faces from the windows, cleared 
all the screens in the room to blood red, yanked the input clips from his 
neck spikes and left them dangling from the roombrain’s terminal. His 
expression empty, he walked from the room without asking permission 
or saying anything at all. 

“What’s his problem?” Stennie said. 

“Who knows?” Comrade had left the door open; I shut it. “Maybe he 
doesn’t like girls.” 

“Look, I want to ask a favor.” I could tell Stennie was nervous; his 
head kept swaying. “This is kind of embarrassing but . . . okay, do you 
think maybe your mom would maybe let me practice on her lovers? I 
don’t want Janet to know I’ve never done it before and there’s some stuff 
I’ve got to figure out.” 

“I don’t know,” I said. “Ask her.” 

But I did know. She would be amused. 

People claimed my mom did not have a sense of humor. Lovey was 
huge, an ocean of a woman. Her umbilical was as big around as my thigh. 
When she walked waves of flesh heaved and rolled. She had beautiful 
skin, flawless and moist. It did not take much to make her sweat. Peeling 
a banana would do it. Lovey was as oral as a baby; she would put anything 
into her mouth. And when she did not have a mouthful, she would babble 
on about whatever came into Mom’s head. Dear hardly ever talked, 
although he could moan and growl and laugh. He touched Lovey when- 
ever he could and shot her long smouldering looks. He was not furry, 
exactly, but he was covered with fine silver hair. Dear was a little guy. 


MR. BOY 


143 



about my size. Although he had one of Upjohn’s finest penises, elastic 
and overloaded with neurons, he was one of the least convincing males 
I had ever met. I doubt Mom herself believed in him all that much. 

Big chatty woman, squirrelly tongue-tied little man. It was funny in 
a bent sort of way to watch the two of them go at each other. Kind of 
like a tug churning against a supertanker. They did not get the chance 
that often. It was dangerous; Dear had to worry about getting crushed 
and poor Lovey’s heart had stopped two or three times. Besides, I think 
Mom liked building up the pressure. Sometimes, as the days without sex 
stretched, you could almost feel lust sparkling off them like static elec- 
tricity. 

That was how they were when I brought Stennie up. Their suite took 
up the entire floor at the hips. Mom’s widest part. Lovey was lolling in 
a tub of warm oil. She liked it flowery and laced with pheromones. Dear 
was prowling around her with a desperate expression, like he might jam 
his plug into a wall socket if he did not get taken care of soon. Stennie’s 
timing was perfect. 

“Look who’s come to visit. Dear,” said Lovey. “Peter and Stennie. How 
nice of you boys to stop by.” She let Dear mop her forehead with a towel. 
“What can we do for you?” 

The skin under Stennie’s jaw quivered. He glanced at me, then at Dear 
and then at the thick red lips that served as the bathroom door. Never 
even looked at her. He was losing his nerve. 

“Oh my, isn’t this exciting. Dear? There’s something going on.” She 
sank into the bath until her chin touched the water. “It’s a secret, isn’t 
it, Peter? Share it with Lovey.” 

“No secret,” I said, “He wants to ask a favor.” And then I told her. 

She giggled and sat up. “I love it.” Honey-colored oil ran from her hair 
and slopped between her breasts. “Were you thinking of both of us, 
Stennie? Or just me?” 

“Well, I . . .” Stennie’s tail switched. “Maybe we just ought to forget 
it.” 

“No, no.” She waved a hand at him “Come here, Stennie. Come close, 
my pretty little monster.” 

He hesitated, then approached the tub. She reached for his right leg 
and touched him just above the heelknob. “You know, I’ve always won- 
dered what scales would feel like.” Her hand climbed; the oil made his 
yellow hide glisten. His eyes were the size of eggs. 

The bedroom was all mattress. Beneath the transparent skin was a 
screen implant, so that Mom could project images not only on the walls 
but on the surface of the bed itself Under the window was a layer of 
heavily vascular flesh, which could be stiffened with blood or drained 
until it was as soft as raw steak. A window dome arched over everything 


144 


JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



and could show slo-mo or thermographic fx across its span. The air was 
warm and wet and smelled like a chemical engineer’s idea of a rose 
garden. 

I settled by the lips. Dear ghosted along the edges of the room, dragging 
his umbilical like a chain, never coming quite near enough to touch 
anyone. I heard him humming as he passed me, a low moaning singsong, 
as if to block out what was happening. Stennie and Lovey were too busy 
with each other to care. As Lovey knelt in front of Stennie, Dear gave 
a mocking laugh. I did not understand how he could be jealous. He was 
with her, part of it. Lovey and Dear were Mom’s remotes, two nodes of 
her nervous system. Yet his pain was as obvious as her pleasure. At last 
he squatted and rocked back and forth on his heels. I glanced up at the 
fx dome; yellow scales slid across oily rolls of flushed skin. 

I yawned. I had always found sex kind of dull. Besides, this was all on 
the record. I could have Comrade replay it for me any time. Lovey stopped 
breathing— then came four or five shuddering gasps in a row. I wondered 
where Comrade had gone. I felt sorry for him. Stennie said something 
to her about rolling over. “Okay?” Feathery skin sounds. A grunt. The 
soft wet slap of flesh against flesh. I thought of my mother’s brain, up 
there in the head where no one ever went. I had no idea how much 
attention she was paying. Was she quivering with Lovey and at the same 
time calculating insolation rates on her chloroplasts? Investing in soy 
futures on the Chicago Board of Trade? Fending off Weldon Montross’s 
latest attack? Plug Montross. I needed to think about something fun. My 
collection. I started piling bodies up in my mind. The hangings and the 
open casket funerals and the stacks of dead at the camps and all those 
muddy soldiers. I shivered as I remembered the empty rigid faces. I liked 
it when their teeth showed. “Oh, oh, oh!” My greatest hits dated from 
the late twentieth century. The dead were everywhere back then, in vids 
and the news and even on T-shirts. They were not shy. That was what 
made Comrade’s photo worth having; it was hard to find modern stuff 
that dirty. Dear brushed by me, his erection bobbing in front of him. It 
was as big around as my wrist. As he passed I could see Stennie’s leg 
scratch across the mattress skin, which glowed with blood blue light. 
Lovey giggled beneath him and her umbilical twitched and suddenly I 
found myself wondering whether Tree was a virgin. 

I came into the mall through the Main Street entrance and hopped the 
westbound slidewalk headed up Elm Street toward the train station. If 
I caught the 3:36 to Grand Central, I could eat dinner in Manhattan, far 
from my problems with Montross and Comrade. Running away had al- 
ways worked for me before. Let someone else clean up the mess while 
I was gone. 


MR. BOY 


145 



The slidewalk carried me past a real estate agency, a flash bar, a 
jewelry store and a Baskin-Robbins. I thought about where I wanted to 
go after New York. San Francisco? Montreal? Maybe I should try Elkhart, 
Indiana — no one would think to look for me there. Just ahead, between 
a drugstore and a take-out Russian restaurant, was the wiseguy deal- 
ership where Mom had bought Comrade. 

I did not want to think about Comrade waiting for me to come home, 
so I stepped into the drugstore and bought a dose of Carefree for $4.29. 
Normally I did not bother with drugs. I had been stunted; no over-the- 
counter flash could compare to that. But the propyl dicarbamates were 
all right. I Ashed the cash card out of my pocket and handed it to the 
stiff behind the counter. He did a doubletake when he saw the denom- 
ination, then carefully inserted the card into the reader to deduct the 
cost of the Carefree. It had my mom’s name on it; he must have expected 
it would trip some alarm for counterfeit plastic or stolen credit. He stared 
at me for a moment, as if trying to remember my face so he could describe 
me to a cop, and then gave the crash card back. The denomination readout 
said it was still good for $16,381.18. 

I picked out a bench in front of a specialty shop called The Happy 
Hippo, hiked up my shorts and poked Carefree into the widest part of 
my thigh. I took a short dreamy swim in the sea of tranquility and when 
I came back to myself, my guilt had been washed away. But so had my 
energy. I sat for a while and scoped the display of glass hippos and plastic 
hippos and fuzzy stuffed hippos, hippo vids and sheets and candles. Down 
the bench from me a homeless woman dozed. It was still pretty early in 
the season for a weather gypsy to have come this far north. She wore red 
shorts and droopy red socks with plastic sandals and four long-sleeved 
shirts, all unbuttoned, over a Funny Honey halter top. Her hair needed 
vacuuming and she smelled old. All grownups smelled that way to me; 
it was something I had never gotten used to. No perfume or deodorant 
could cover up the leathery stink of adulthood. Kids could smell bad, too, 
but usually from something they got on them. It did not come from a 
rotting body. I rubbed a finger in the dampness under my arm, slicked 
it and sniffed. There was a sweetness to kid sweat. I touched the drying 
Anger to my tongue. You could even taste it. If I gave up getting stunted, 
stopped being Mr. Boy, I would smell like the woman at the end of the 
bench. I would start to die. I had never understood how grownups could 
live with that. 

The gypsy woke up, stretched and smiled at me with gummy teeth. 
“You left Comrade behind?” she said. 

I was startled. “What did you say?” 

“You know what this is?” She twitched her sleeve and a penlight 
appeared in her hand. 

148 


JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



My throat tightened. “I know what it looks like.” 

She gave me a wicked smile, aimed the penlight and burned a pinhole 
through the bench a few centimeters from my leg. “Maybe I could interest 
you in some free laser surgery?” 

I could smell scorched plastic. “You’re going to needle me here, in the 
middle of the Elm Street Mall?” I thought she was bluffing. Probably. 
I hoped. 

“If that’s the way you want it. Mr. Montross wants to know when 
you’re delivering the wiseguy to us.” 

“Gret away from me.” 

“Not until you do what needs to be done.” 

When I saw Happy Lurdane come out of The Happy Hippo, I waved. 
A desperation move, but then it was easy to be brave with a head full 
of Carefree. 

“Mr. Boy.” She veered over to us. “Hi!” 

I scooted farther down the bench to make room for her between me 
and the g 5 T)sy. I knew she would stay to chat. Happy Lurdane was one 
of those chirpy lightweights who seemed to want lots of friends but did 
not really try to be one. We tolerated her because she did not mind being 
snubbed and she threw great parties. 

“Where have you been?” She settled beside me. “Haven’t seen you in 
ages.” The penlight disappeared and the gypsy fell back into drowsy 
character. 

“Around.” 

“Want to see what I just bought?” 

I nodded. My heart was hammering. 

She opened the bag and took out a fist-sized bundle covered with ship- 
ping plastic. She unwrapped a statue of a blue hippopotamus. “Be 
careful.” She handed it to me. 

“Cute.” The hippo had crude flower designs drawn on its body; it was 
chipped and cracked. 

“Ancient Egyptian. That means it’s even before antique.” She pulled 
a slip from the bag and read. “Twelfth Dynasty, 1991-1786 BC. Can you 
believe you can just buy something like that here in the mall? I mean 
it must be like a thousand years old or something.” 

“Try four thousand.” 

“No wonder it cost so much. He wasn’t going to sell it to me, so I had 
to spend some of next month’s allowance.” She took it from me and 
rewrapped it. “It’s for the smash party tomorrow. You’re coming, aren’t 
you?” 

“Maybe.” 

“Is something wrong?” 

I ignored that. 


MR. BOY 


147 




“Hey, where’s Comrade? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you two apart 
before.” 

I decided to take a chance. “Want to get some doboys?” 

"Sure.” She glanced at me with delighted astonishment. “Are you sure 
you’re all right?” 

I took her arm, maneuvering to keep her between me and the gypsy. 
If Happy got needled it would be no great loss to western civilization. 
She babbled on about her party as we stepped onto the westbound slide- 
walk. I turned to look back. The gypsy waved as she hopped the east- 
bound. 

“Look Happy,” I said, “I’m sorry, but I changed my mind. Later, okay?” 

“But . . .” 

I did not stop for an argument. I darted off the slidewalk and sprinted 
through the mall to the station. I went straight to a ticket window, shoved 
the cash card under the grill and asked the agent for a one way to Grand 
Central. Forty thousand people lived in New Canaan; most of them had 
heard of me because of my mom. Nine million strangers jammed New 
York City; it was a good place to disappear. The agent had my ticket in 
her hand when the reader beeped and spat the card out. 

“No!” I slammed my fist on the counter. “Try it again.” The cash card 
was guaranteed by AmEx to be secure. And it had just worked at the 
drug store. 

She glanced at the card, then slid it back under the grill. “No use.” 
The denomination readout flashed alternating messages: Voided and 
Bank recall. “You’ve got trouble, son.” 

She was right. As I left the station, I felt the Carefree struggle one 
last time with my dread — and lose. I did not even have the money to call 
home. I wandered around for a while, dazed, and then I was standing in 
front of the flower shop in the Elm Street Mall. 

Green Dream 

Contemporary and Conventional Plants 

I had telelinked with Tree every day since our drive and every day 
she had asked me over. But I was not ready to meet her family; I suppose 
I was still trying to pretend she was not a stiff. I wavered at the door 
now, breathing the cool scent of damp soil in clay pots. The gypsy could 
come after me again; I might be putting these people in danger. Using 
Happy as a shield was one thing, but I liked Tree. A lot. I backed away 
and peered through a window fringed with sweat and teeming with 
bizarre plants with flame-colored tongues. Someone wearing khaki 
moved. I could not tell if it was Tree or not. I thought of what she had 
said about no one having adventures in the mall. 

The front of the showroom was a green cave, darker than I had ex- 
pected. Baskets dripping with bright flowers hung like stalactites; leath- 


MR. BOY 


149 



ery-leaved understory plants formed stalagmites. As I threaded my way 
toward the back I came upon the kid I had seen wearing the Green Dream 
uniform, a khaki nightmare of pleats and flaps and brass buttons and 
about six too many pockets. He was misting leaves with a pump bottle 
filled with blue liquid. I decided he must be the brother. 

“Hi,” I said. “I’m looking for Treemonisha.” 

Fidel was shorter than me and darker than his sister. He had a wiry 
plush of beautiful black hair that I was immediately tempted to touch. 

“Are you?” He eyed me as if deciding how hard I would be to beat up, 
then he smiled. He had crooked teeth. “You don’t look like yourself.” 

“No?” 

“What are you, scared? You’re whiter than rice, cashman. Don’t worry, 
the stiffs won’t hurt you.” Laughing, he feinted a punch at my arm; I 
was not reassured. 

“You’re Fidel.” 

“I’ve seen your DI files,” he said. “I asked around, I know about you. 
So don’t be telling my sister any more lies, understand?” He snapped his 
fingers in my face. “Behave yourself, cashman, and we’ll be fine.” He 
still had the boyish excitability I had lost after the first stunting. “She’s 
out back, so first you have to get by the old man.” 

The rear of the store was brighter; sunlight streamed through the clear 
krylac roof There was a counter and behind it a glass-doored refrigerator 
filled with cut flowers. A side entrance opened to the greenhouse. Mrs. 
Schlieman, one of Mom’s lawyers who had an office in the mall, was 
deciding what to buy. She was shopping with her wiseguy secretary, who 
looked like he had just stepped out of a vodka ad. 

“Wait.” Fidel rested a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll tell her you’re here.” 

“But how long will they last?” Mrs. Schlieman sniffed a frilly yellow 
flower. “I should probably get the duraroses.” 

“Whatever you want, Mrs. Schlieman. Duraroses are a good product, 
I sell them by the truckload,” said Mr. Joplin with a chuckle. “But these 
carnations are real flowers, raised here in my greenhouse. So maybe you 
can’t stick them in your dishwasher, but put some where people can 
touch and smell them and I guarantee you’ll get compliments.” 

“Why Peter Cage,” said Mrs. Schlieman. “Is that you? I haven’t seen 
you since the picnic. How’s your mother?” She did not introduce her 
wiseguy. 

“Extreme,” I said. 

She nodded absently. “That’s nice. All right then, Mr. Joplin, give me 
a dozen of your carnations — and two dozen yellow duraroses.” 

Mrs. Schlieman chatted politely at me while Tree’s father wrapped the 
order. He was a short, rumpled, balding man who smiled too much. He 
seemed to like wearing the corporate uniform. Anyone else would have 

150 JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



fixed the hair and the wrinkles. Not Mr. Joplin; he was a museum-quality 
throwback. As he took Mrs. Schlieman’s cash card from the wiseguy, he 
beamed at me over his glasses. Glasses! 

When Mrs. Schlieman left, so did the smile. “Peter Cage?” he said. 
“Is that your name?” 

“Mr. Boy is my name, sir.” 

“You’re Tree’s new friend.” He nodded. “She’s told us about you. She’s 
doing chores just now. You know, we have to work for a living here.” 

Sure, and I knew what he left unsaid: unlike you, you spoiled little 
freak. It was always the same with these stiffs. I walked in the door and 
already they hated me. At least he was not pretending, like Mrs. Schlie- 
man. I gave him two points for honesty and kept my mouth shut. 

“What is it you want here, Peter?” 

“Nothing, sir.” If he was going to “Peter” me, I was going to “sir” him 
right back. “I just stopped by to say hello. Treemonisha did invite me, 
sir, but if you’d rather I left . . .” 

“No, no. Tree warned us you might come.” 

She and Fidel raced into the room as if they were afraid their father 
and I would already be at each other’s throats. “Oh hi, Mr. Boy,” she 
said. 

Her father snorted at the sound of my name. 

“Hi.” I grinned at her. It was the easiest thing I had done that day. 

She was wearing her uniform. When she saw that I had noticed, she 
blushed. “Well, you asked for it.” She tugged self-consciously at the waist 
of her fatigues. “You want to come in?” 

“Just a minute.” Mr. Joplin stepped in front of the door, blocking our 
escape. “You finished E-class?” 

“Yes.” 

“Checked the flats?” 

“I’m almost done.” 

“After that you’d better pick some dinner and get it started. Your 
mama called and said she wouldn’t be home until six-fifteen.” 

“Sure.” 

“And you’ll take orders for me on line two?” 

She leaned against the counter and sighed. “Do I have a choice?” 

He backed away and waved us through. “Sorry, sweetheart. I don’t 
know how we would get along without you.” He caught her brother by 
the shirt. “Not you, Fidel. You’re misting, remember?” 

A short tunnel ran from their mall storefront to the rehabbed furniture 
warehouse built over the Amtrak rails. Green Dream had installed a 
krylac roof and fans and a grolighting system; the Joplins squeezed 
themselves into the leftover spaces not filled with inventory. The air in 

151 


MR. BOY 



the greenhouse was heavy and warm and it smelled like rain. No walls, 
no privacy other than that provided by the plants. 

“Here’s where I sleep.” Tree sat on her unmade bed. Her space was 
formed by a cinder block wall painted yellow and a screen of palms. 
“Chinese fan, bamboo, lady, date, kentia,” she said, naming them for me 
like they were her pets. “I grow them myself for spending money.” Her 
schoolcomm was on top of her dresser. Several drawers hung open; pink 
skintights trailed from one. Clothes were scattered like piles of leaves 
across the floor. “I guess I’m kind of a slob,” she said as she stripped off 
the uniform, wadded it and then banked it off the dresser into the top 
drawer. I could see her bare back in the mirror plastic taped to the wall. 
“Take your things off if you want.” 

I hesitated. 

“Or not. But it’s kind of muggy to stay dressed. You’ll sweat.” 

I unvelcroed my shirt. I did not mind at all seeing Tree without clothes. 
But I did not undress for anyone except the stiffs at the clinic. I stepped 
out of my pants. Being naked somehow had got connected with being 
helpless. I had this puckery feeling in my dick, like it was going to curl 
up and die. I could imagine the gypsy popping out from behind a palm 
and laughing at me. No, I was not going to think about that. Not here. 

“Comfortable?” said Tree. 

“Sure.” My voice was turning to dust in my throat. “Do all Green 
Dream employees run around the back room in the nude?” 

“I doubt it.” She smiled as if the thought tickled her. “We’re not exactly 
your average mall drones. Come help me finish the chores.” 

I was glad to let her lead so that she was not looking at me, although 
I could still watch her. I was fascinated by the sweep of her buttocks, the 
curve of her spine. She strolled, flatfooted and at ease, through her private 
jungle. At first I scuttled along on the balls of my feet, ready to dart 
behind a plant if anyone came. But after a while I decided to stop being 
so skittish. I realized I would probably survive being naked. 

Tree stopped in front of a workbench covered with potted seedlings in 
plastic trays and picked up a hose from the floor. 

“What’s this stuff?” I kept to the opposite side of the bench, using it 
to cover myself. 

“Greens.” She lifted a seedling to check the water level in the tray 
beneath. 

“What are greens?” 

“It’s too boring.” She squirted some water in and replaced the seedling. 

“Tell me. I’m interested.” 

“In greens? You liar.” She glanced at me and shook her head. “Okay.” 
She pointed as she said the names. “Lettuce, spinach, pak choi, chard, 
kale, rocket — got that? And a few tomatoes over there. Peppers, too. GD 


152 


JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



is trying to break into the food business. They think people will grow 
more of their own if they find out how easy it is.” 

“Is it?” 

“Greens are.” She inspected the next tray. “Just add water.” 

“Yeah, sure.” 

“It’s because they’ve been photosynthetically enhanced. Bigger leaves 
arranged better, low respiration rates. They teach us this stuff at GD 
Family Camp. It’s what we do instead of vacation.” She squashed some- 
thing between her thumb and forefinger. “They mix all these bacteria 
that make their own fertilizer into the soil — fix nitrogen right out of the 
air. And then there’s this other stuff that sticks to the roots, rhizobacteria 
and mycorrhizae.” She finished the last tray and coiled the hose. “These 
flats will produce under candlelight in a closet. Bored yet?” 

“How do they taste?” 

“Pretty bland, most of them. Some stink, like kale and rocket. But we 
have to eat them for the good of the corporation.” She stuck her tongue 
out. “You want to stay for dinner?” 

Mrs. Joplin made me call home before she would feed me; she refused 
to understand that my mom did not care. So I linked, asked Mom to send 
a car to the back door at eight-thirty, and faded. No time to discuss the 
missing sixteen thousand. 

Dinner was from the cookbook Tree had been issued at camp: a bowl 
of cold bean soup, fresh corn bread, and chard and cheese loaf. She let 
me help her make it, even though I had never cooked before. I was 
amazed at how simple com bread was. Six ingredients: flour, corn meal, 
baking powder, milk, oil, and ovobinder. Mix and pour into a greased 
pan. Bake 20 minutes at 220 Celsius and serve! There is nothing magic 
or even very mysterious about homemade corn bread, except for the way 
its smell held me spellbound. 

Supper was the Joplins’ daily meal together. They ate in front of se- 
curity windows near the tunnel to the store; when a customer came, 
someone ran out front. According to contract, they had to stay open 
twenty-four hours a day. Many of the suburban malls had gone to all- 
night operation; the competition from New York City was deadly. Mr. 
Joplin stood duty most of the time, but since they were a franchise family 
everybody took turns. Even Mrs. Joplin, who also worked part-time as 
a factfinder at the mail’s DataStop. 

Tree’s mother was plump and graying and she had a smile that was 
almost bright enough to distract me from her naked body. She seemed 
harmless, except that she knew how to ask questions. After all, her job 
was finding out stuff for DataStop customers. She had this way of locking 
onto you as you talked; the longer the conversation, the greater her 


MR. BOY 


153 



intensity. It was hard to lie to her. Normally that kind of aggressiveness 
in grownups made me jumpy. 

No doubt she had run a search on me; I wondered just what she had 
turned up. Factfinders had to obey the law, so they only accessed public 
domain information — unlike Comrade, who would cheerfully operate on 
whatever I set him to. The Joplins’ bank records, for instance. I knew 
that Mrs. Joplin had made about $11,000 last year at the Infomat in the 
Elkhart Mall, that the family borrowed $135,000 at 9.78 percent interest 
to move to their new franchise and that they lost $213 in their first two 
months in New Canaan. 

I kept my research a secret, of course, and they acted innocent, too. I 
let them pump me about Mom as we ate. I was used to being asked; after 
all. Mom was famous. Fidel wanted to know how much it had cost her 
to get twanked, how big she was, what she looked like on the inside and 
what she ate, if she got cold in the winter. Stuff like that. The others 
asked more personal questions. Tree wondered if Mom ever got lonely 
and whether she was going to be the Statue of Liberty for the rest of her 
life. Mrs. Joplin was interested in Mom’s remotes, of all things. Which 
ones I got along with, which ones I could not stand, whether I thought 
any of them was really her. Mr. Joplin asked if she liked being what she 
was. How was I supposed to know? 

After dinner, I helped Fidel clear the table. While we were alone in 
the kitchen, he complained. “You think they eat this shit at GD head- 
quarters?” He scraped his untouched chard loaf into the composter. 

“I kind of liked the corn bread.” 

“If only he’d buy meat once in a while, but he’s too cheap. Or doboys. 
Tree says you bought her doboys.” 

I told him to skip school some time and we would go out for lunch; he 
thought that was a great idea. 

When we came back out, Mr. Joplin actually smiled at me. He had 
been losing his edge all during dinner. Maybe chard agreed with him. 
He pulled a pipe from his pocket, began stuffing something into it and 
asked me if I followed baseball. I told him no. Paintball? No. Basketball? 
I said I watched dino fights sometimes. 

“His pal is the dinosaur that goes to our school,” said Fidel. 

“He may look like a dinosaur, but he’s really a boy,” said Mr. Joplin, 
as if making an important distinction. “The dinosaurs died out millions 
of years ago.” 

“Humans aren’t allowed in dino fights,” I said, just to keep the con- 
versation going. “Only twanked dogs and horses and elephants.” 

Silence. Mr. Joplin puffed on his pipe and then passed it to his wife. 
She watched the glow in the bowl through half-lidded eyes as she inhaled. 
Fidel caught me staring. 


154 


JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



“What’s the matter? Don’t you get twisted?’’ He took the pipe in his 
turn. 

I was so croggled I did not know what to say. Even the Marleys had 
switched to THC inhalers. “But smoking is bad for you.” It smelled like 
a dirty sock had caught fire. 

“Hemp is emcient. Natural.” Mr. Joplin spoke in a clipped voice as if 
swallowing his words. “Opens the mind to what’s real.” When he sighed, 
smoke poured out of his nose. “We grow it ourselves, you know.” 

I took the pipe when Tree offered it. Even before I brought the stem 
to my mouth, the world tilted and I watched myself slide into what 
seemed very much like an hallucination. Here I was sitting around na- 
ked, in the mall, with a bunch of stiffs, smoking antique drugs. And I 
was enjoying myself. Incredible. I inhaled and immediately the flash hit 
me; it was as if my brain were an enormous bud, blooming inside my 
head. 

“Grood stuff.” I laughed smoke and then began coughing. 

Fidel refilled my glass with ice water. “Have a sip, cashman.” 

“Customer.” Tree pointed at the window. 

“Leave!” Mr. Joplin waved impatiently at him. “Go away.” The man 
on the screen knelt and turned over the price tag on a fern. “Damn.” He 
jerked his uniform from the hook by the door, pulled on the khaki pants 
and was slithering into the shirt as he disappeared down the tunnel. 

“So is Green Dream trying to break into the flash market, too?” I 
handed the pipe to Mrs. Joplin. There was a fleck of ash on her left breast. 

“What we do back here is our business,” she said. “We work hard so 
we can live the way we want.” Tree was studying her fingerprints. I 
realized I had said the wrong thing so I shut up. Obviously, the Joplins 
were drifting from the lifestyle taught at Green Dream Family Camp. 

Fidel announced he was going to school tomorrow and Mrs. Joplin told 
him no, he could link to E-class as usual, and Fidel claimed he could not 
concentrate at home, and Mrs. Joplin said he was trying to get out of his 
chores. While they were arguing. Tree nudged my leg and shot me a fe^’s 
leave look. I nodded. 

“Excuse us.” She pushed back her chair. “Mr. Boy has got to go home 
soon.” 

Mrs. Joplin pointed for her to stay. “You wait until your father gets 
back,” she said. “Tell me, Mr. Boy, have you lived in New Canaan long?” 

“All my life,” I said. 

“How old did you say you were?” 

“Mama, he’s twenty-five,” said Tree. “I told you.” 

“And what do you do for a living?” 

"Mama, you promised.” 


MR. BOY 


155 



“Nothing,” I said. “I’m lucky, I guess. I don’t need to worry about 
money. If you didn’t need to work, would you?” 

“Everybody needs work to do,” Mrs. Joplin said. “Work makes us real. 
Unless you have work to do and people who love you, you don’t exist.” 

Talk about twentieth century humanist goop! At another time in an- 
other place, I probably would have snapped, but now the words would 
not come. My brain had turned into a flower; all I could think were daisy 
thoughts. The Joplins were such a strange combination of fast-forward 
and rewind. I could not tell what they wanted from me. 

“Seventeen dollars and ninety-nine cents,” said Mr. Joplin, returning 
from the storefront. “What’s going on in here?” He glanced at his wife 
and some signal which I did not catch passed between them. He circled 
the table, came up behind me and laid his heavy hands on my shoulders. 
I shuddered; I thought for a moment he meant to strangle me. 

“I’m not going to hurt you, Peter,” he said. “Before you go I have 
something to say.” 

"Daddy.” Tree squirmed in her chair. Fidel looked uncomfortable, too, 
as if he guessed what was coming. 

“Sure.” I did not have much choice. 

The weight on my shoulders eased but did not entirely go away. “You 
should feel the ache in this boy, Ladonna.” 

“I know,” said Mrs. Joplin. 

“Hard as plastic.” Mr. Joplin touched the muscles corded along my 
neck. “You get too hard, you snap.” He set his thumbs at the base of my 
skull and kneaded with an easy circular motion. “Your body isn’t some 
machine that you’ve downloaded into. It’s alive. Real. You have to learn 
to listen to it. That’s why we smoke. Hear these muscles? They’re scream- 
ing.” He let his hand slide down my shoulders. “Now listen.” His fin- 
gertips probed along my upper spine. “Hear that? Your muscles stay 
tense because you don’t trust anyone. You always have to be ready to 
take a hit and you can’t tell where it’s coming from. You’re rigid and 
angry and scared. Reality . . . your body is speaking to you.” 

His voice was as big and warm as his hands. Tree was giving him a 
look that could boil water but the way he touched me made too much 
sense to resist. 

“We don’t mind helping you ease the strain. That’s the way Mrs. Joplin 
and I are. That’s the way we brought the kids up. But first you have to 
admit you’re hurting. And then you have to respect us enough to take 
what we have to give. I don’t feel that in you, Peter. You’re not ready 
to give up your pain. You just want us poor stiffs to admire how hard it’s 
made you. We haven’t got time for that kind of shit, okay? You learn to 
listen to yourself and you’ll be welcome around here. We’ll even call you 
Mr. Boy, even though it’s a damn stupid name.” 


156 


JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



No one spoke for a moment. 

“Sorry, Tree,” he said. “We’ve embarrassed you again. But we love 
you, so you’re stuck with us.” I could feel it in his hands when he chuckled. 
“I suppose I do get carried away sometimes.” 

"Sometimes^’ said Fidel. Tree just smouldered. 

“It’s late,” said Mrs. Joplin. “Let him go now, Jamaal. His mama’s 
sending a car over.” 

Mr. Joplin stepped back and I almost fell off my chair from leaning 
back against him. I stood, shakily. “Thanks for dinner.” 

Tree stalked through the greenhouse to the rear exit, her hairworks 
glittering against her bare back. I had to trot to keep up with her. There 
was no car in sight so we waited at the doorway and I put on my clothes. 

“I can’t take much more of this.” She stared through the little wire 
glass window in the door, like a prisoner plotting her escape. “I mean, 
he’s not a psychologist or a great philosopher or whatever the hell he 
thinks he is. He’s just a pompous mall drone.” 

“He’s not that bad.” Actually, I understood what her father had said 
to me; it was scary. “I like your family.” 

“You don’t have to live with them!” She kept watching at the door. 
“They promised they’d behave with you; I should have known better. 
This happens every time I bring someone home.” She puffed an imaginary 
pipe, imitating her father. “Think what you’re doing to yourself, you poor 
fool, and say, isn’t it just too bad about modern life? Love, love, 
love — fuck!” She turned to me. “I’m sick of it. People are going to think 
I’m as sappy and thickheaded as my parents.” 

“I don’t.” 

“You’re lucky. You’re rich and your mom leaves you alone. You’re New 
Canaan. My folks are Elkhart, Indiana.” 

“Being New Canaan is nothing to brag about. So what are you?” 

“Not a Joplin.” She shook her head. “Not much longer, anyway; I’m 
eighteen in February. I think your car’s here.” She held out her arms 
and hugged me goodbye. “Sorry you had to sit through that. Don’t drop 
me, okay? I like you, Mr. Boy.” She did not let go for a while. 

Dropping her had never occurred to me; I was not thinking of anything 
at all except the silkiness of her skin, the warmth of her body. Her breath 
whispered through my hair and her nipples brushed my ribs and then 
she kissed me. Just on the cheek but the damage was done. I was stunted. 
I was not supposed to feel this way about anyone. 

Comrade was waiting in the back seat. We rode home in silence; I had 
nothing to say to him. He would not understand — none of my friends 
would. They would warn me that all she wanted was to spend some of 
my money. Or they would make bad jokes about the nudity or the Joplins’ 
mushy realism. No way I could explain the innocence of the way they 


MR. BOY 


157 



touched one another. The old man did what to you? Yeah, and if I wanted 
a hug at home who was I supposed to ask? Comrade? Lovey? The greeter? 
Was I supposed to climb up to the head and fall asleep against Mom’s 
doorbone, waiting for it to open, like I used to do when I was really a 
kid? 

The greeter was her usual nonstick self when I got home. She was so 
glad to see me and she wanted to know where I had been and if I had 
a good time and if I wanted Cook to make me a snack? Around. Yes. No. 

She said the bank had called about some problem with one of the cash 
cards she had given me, a security glitch which they had taken care of 
and were very sorry about. Did I know about it and did I need a new 
card and would twenty thousand be enough? Yes. Please. Thanks. 

And that was it. I found myself resenting Mom because she did not 
have to care about losing sixteen or twenty or fifty thousand dollars. And 
she had reminded me of my problems when all I wanted to think of was 
Tree. She was no help to me, never had been. I had things so twisted 
around that I almost told her about Montross myself, just to get a re- 
action. Here some guy had tapp>ed our files and threatened my life and 
she asked if I wanted a snack. Why keep me around if she was going to 
pay so little attention? I wanted to shock her, to make her take me 
seriously. 

But I did not know how. 

The roombrain woke me. “Stennie’s calling.” 

“Mmm.” 

“Talk to me, Mr. Party Boy.” A window opened; he was in his car. 
“You dead or alive?” 

“Asleep.” I rolled over. “Time is it?” 

“Ten-thirty and I’m bored. Want me to come get you now or should I 
meet you there?” 

“Wha . . . ?” 

“Happy’s. Don’t tell me you forgot. They’re doing a piano.” 

“Who cares?” I crawled out of bed and drooped into the bathroom. 

“She says she’s asking Tree Joplin,” Stennie called after me. 

“Asking her what?” I came out. 

“To the party.” 

“Is she going?” 

“She’s your cush.” He gave me a toothy smile. “Call back when you’re 
ready. Later.” He faded. 

“She left a message,” said the roombrain. “Half hour ago.” 

“Tree? You got me up for Stennie and not for her?” 

“He’s on the list, she’s not. Happy called, too.” 


158 


JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



“Comrade should’ve told you. Where is he?” Now I was grouchy. “She’s 
on the list, okay? Give me playback.” 

Tree seemed pleased with herself. “Hi, this is me. I got myself invited 
to a smash party this afternoon. You want to go?” She faded. 

“That’s all? Call her!” 

“Both her numbers are busy; I’ll set redial. I found Comrade; he’s on 
another line. You want Happy’s message?” 

“No. Yes.” 

“You promised, Mr. Boy.” Happy giggled. “Look, you really, really 
don’t want to miss this. Stennie’s coming and he said I should ask Joplin 
if I wanted you here. So you’ve got no excuse.” 

Someone tugged at her. “Stop that! Sorry, I’m being molested by a 
thick. . . .” She batted at her assailant. “Mr. Boy, did I tell you that this 
Japanese reporter is coming to shoot a vid? What?” She turned off camera. 
“Sure, just like on the nature channel. Wildlife of America. We’re all 
going to be famous. In Japan! This is history, Mr. Boy. And you’re . . .” 

Her face froze as the redial program finally linked to the Green Dream. 
The roombrain brought Tree up in a new window. “Oh hi,” she said. “You 
rich boys sleep late.” 

“What’s this about Happy’s?” 

“She invited me.” Tree was recharging her hairworks with a red brush. 
“I said yes. Something wrong?” 

Comrade slipped into the room; I shushed him. “You sure you want 
to go to a smash party? Sometimes they get a little crazy.” 

She aimed the brush at me. “You’ve been to smash parties before. You 
survived.” 

“Sure, but ...” 

“Well, I haven’t. All I know is that everybody at school is talking about 
this one and I want to see what it’s about.” 

“You tell your parents you’re going?” 

“Are you kidding? They’d just say it was too dangerous. What’s the 
matter, Mr. Boy, are you scared? Come on, it’ll be extreme.” 

“She’s right. You should go,” said Comrade. 

“Is that Comrade?” 'Tree said. “You tell him. Comrade!” 

I glared at him. “Okay, okay, I guess I’m outnumbered. Stennie said 
he’d drive. You want us to pick you up?” 

She did. 

I flew at Comrade as soon as Tree faded. “Don’t you ever do that again!” 
I shoved him and he bumped up against the wall. “I ought to throw you 
to Montross.” 

“You know, I just finished chatting with him.” Comrade stayed calm 
and made no move to defend himself. “He wants to meet — the three of 
us, face to face. He suggested Happy’s.” 


MR. BOY 


159 



“He suggested ... I told you not to talk to him.” 

“I know.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I think we should do it.” 

“Who gave you permission to think?” 

“You did. What if we give him the picture back and open our flies and 
then I grovel, say I’m sorry, it’ll never happen again, blah, blah, blah. 
Maybe we can even buy him off. What have we got to lose?” 

“You can’t bribe software. And what if he decides to snatch us?” I told 
Comrade about the gypsy with the penlight. “You want Tree mixed up 
in this?” 

All the expression drained from his face. He did not say anything at 
first but I had watched his subroutines long enough to know that when 
he looked this blank, he was shaken. “So we take a risk, maybe we can 
get it over with,” he said. “He’s not interested in Tree and I won’t let 
anything happen to you. Why do you think your mom bought me?” 

Happy Lurdane lived on the former estate of Philip Johnson, a noto- 
rious twentieth century architect. In his will Johnson had arranged to 
turn his compound into the Philip Johnson Memorial Museum, but after 
he died his work went out of fashion. The glass skyscrapers in the cities 
did not age well; they started to fall apart or were torn down because 
they wasted energy. Nobody visited the museum and it went bankrupt. 
The Lurdanes had bought the property and made some changes. 

Johnson had designed all the odd little buildings on the estate himself 
The main house was a shoebox of glass with no inside walls; near it stood 
a windowless brick guest house. On a pond below was a dock that looked 
like a Greek temple. Past the circular swimming pool near the houses 
were two galleries which had once held Johnson’s art collection, long 
since sold off. In Johnson’s day, the scattered buildings had been con- 
nected only by paths, which made the compound impossible in the frosty 
Connecticut winters. The Lurdanes had enclosed the paths in clear tubes 
and commuted in a golf cart. 

Stennie told his Alpha not to wait, since the lot was already full and 
cars were parked well down the driveway. Five of us squeezed out of the 
car: me. Tree, Comrade, Stennie, and Janet Hoyt. Janet wore a Yankees 
jersey over pinstriped shorts. Tree was a little overdressed in her silver 
jaunts, I had on baggies padded to make me seem bigger and Comrade 
wore his usual window coat. Stennie lugged a box with his swag for the 
party. 

Freddy the Teddy let us in. “Stennie and Mr. Boy!” He reared back on 
his hindquarters and roared. “Glad I’m not going to be the only beastie 
here. Hi, Janet. Hi, I’m Freddy,” he said to Tree. His pink tongue lolled. 
“Come in, this way. Fun starts right here. Some kids are swimming and 


160 


JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



there’s sex in the guest house. Everybody else is with Happy having 
lunch in the sculpture gallery.” 

The interior of the Glass House was bright and hard. Dark wood block 
floor, some unfriendly furniture, huge panes of glass framed in black 
painted steel. The few kids in the kitchen were passing an inhaler around 
and watching a microwave fill up with popcorn. 

“I’m hot.” Janet stuck the inhaler into her face and pressed. “Anybody 
want to swim? Tree?” 

“Okay.” Tree breathed in a polite dose and breathed out a giggle. 
“You?” she asked me. 

“I don’t think so.” I was too nervous: I kept expecting someone to jump 
out and throw a net over me. “I’ll watch.” 

“I’d swim with you,” said Stennie, “but I promised Happy I’d bring her 
these party favors as soon as I arrived.” He nudged the box with his foot. 
“Can you wait a few minutes?” 

“Comrade and I will take them over.” I grabbed the box and headed 
for the door, glad for the excuse to leave Tree behind while I went to find 
Montross. “Meet you at the pool.” 

The golf cart was gone so we walked through the tube toward the 
sculpture gallery. “You have the picture?” 1 said. 

Comrade patted the pocket of his window coat. 

The tube was not air-conditioned and the afternoon sun pounded us 
through the optical plastic. There was no sound inside; even our footsteps 
were swallowed by the astroturf. The box got heavier. We passed the 
entrance to the old painting gallery, which looked like a bomb sheltej. 
Finally I had to break the silence. “I feel strange, being here,” I said. 
“Not just because of the thing with Montross. I really think I lost myself 
last time I got stunted. Not sure who I am anymore, but I don’t think 
I belong with these kids.” 

“People change, tovarisch,” said Comrade. “Even you.” 

“Have I changed?” 

He smiled. “Now that you’ve got a cush, your own mother wouldn’t 
recognize you.” 

“You know what your problem is?” I grinned and bumped up against 
him on purpose. “You’re jealous of Tree.” 

“Shouldn’t I be?” 

“Oh, I don’t know. I can’t tell if Tree likes who I was or who I might 
be. She’s changing, too. She’s so hot to break away from her parents, 
become part of this town. Except that what she’s headed for probably 
isn’t worth the trip. I feel like I should protect her, but that means 
guarding her from people like me, except I don’t think I’m Mom’s Mr. 
Boy anymore. Does that make sense?” 

“Sure.” He gazed straight ahead but all the heads on his window coat 

MR. BOY 161 



were scoping me. “Maybe when you’re finished changing, you won’t need 
me.” 

The thought had occurred to me. For years he had been the only one 
I could talk to but, as we closed on the gallery, I did not know what to 
say. I shook my head. “I just feel strange.” 

And then we arrived. The sculpture gallery was designed for show- 
offs: short flights of steps and a series of stagy balconies descended around 
the white brick exterior walls to the central exhibition area. The space 
was open so you could chat with your little knot of friends and, at the 
same time, spy on everyone else. About thirty kids were eating pizza and 
crispex off paper plates. At the bottom of the stairs, as advertised, was 
an black upright piano. Piled beside it was the rest of the swag. A Boston 
rocker, a case of green Coke bottles, a Virgin Mary in half a blue bathtub, 
a huge conch shell, china and crystal and assorted smaller treasures, 
including a four-thousand-year-old ceramic hippo. There were real ani- 
mals, too, in cages near the gun rack: a turkey, some stray dogs and cats, 
turtles, frogs, assorted rodents. 

I was threading my way across the first balcony when I was stopped 
by the Japanese reporter, who was wearing microcam eyes. 

“Excuse me, please,” he said, “I am Matsuo Shikibu and I will be 
recording this event today for Nippon Hoso Kyokai. Public telelink of 
Japan.” He smiled and bowed. When his head came up the red light 
between his lenses was on. “You are . . . ?” 

“Raskolnikov,” said Comrade, edging between me and the camera. 
“Rodeo Raskolnikov.” He took Shikibu’s hand and pumped it. “And my 
associate here, Mr. Peter Pan.” He turned as if to introduce me but we 
had long since choreographed this dodge. As I sidestepped past, he kept 
shielding me from the reporter with his body. “We’re friends of the bride,” 
Comrade said, “and we’re really excited to be making new friends in 
your country. Banzai, Nippon!” 

I slipped by them and scooted downstairs. Happy was basking by the 
piano; she spotted me as I reached the middle landing. 

“Mr. Boy!” It was not so much a greeting as an announcement. She 
was wearing a body mike and her voice boomed over the sound system. 
“You made it.” 

The stream of conversation rippled momentarily, a few heads turned 
and then the party flowed on. Shikibu rushed to the edge of the upper 
balcony and caught me with a long shot. 

I set the box on the Steinway. “Stennie brought this.” 

She opened it eagerly. “Look everyone!” She held up a stack of square 
cardboard albums, about thirty centimeters on a side. There were pic- 
tures of musicians on the front, words on the back. “What are they?” she 
asked me. 


162 


JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



“Phonograph records,” said the kid next to Happy. “It’s how they used 
to play music before digital.” 

“Erroll Garner Soliloquy,” she read aloud. “What’s this? D-j-a-n-g-o 
Reinhardt and the American Jazz Giants. Sounds scary.” She giggled as 
she pawed quickly through the other albums. Handy, Ellington, Hawk- 
ins, Parker, three Armstrongs. One was Piano Rags By Scott Joplin. 
Stennie’s bent idea of a joke? Maybe the lizard was smarter than he 
looked. Happy pulled a black plastic record out of one sleeve and scratched 
a fingernail across little ridges. “Oh, a non-slip surface.” 

The party had a limited attention span. When she realized she had 
lost her audience, she shut off the mike and put the box with the rest 
of the swag. “We have to start at four, no matter what. There’s so much 
stuff.” The kid who knew about records wormed into our conversation; 
Happy put her hand on his shoulder. “Mr. Boy, do you know my friend, 
Weldon?” she said. “He’s new.” 

Montross grinned. “We met on Playroom.” 

“Where is Stennie, anyway?” said Happy. 

“Swimming,” I said. Montross appeared to be in his late teens. Bigger 
than me — everyone was bigger than me. He wore green shorts and a 
window shirt of surfers at Waimea. He looked like everybody; there was 
nothing about him to remember. I considered bashing the smirk off his 
face but it was a bad idea. If he was software he could not feel anything 
and I would probably break my hand on his temporary chassis. “Got to 
go. I promised Stennie I’d meet him back at the pool. Hey Weldon, want 
to tag along?” 

“You come right back,” said Happy. “We’re starting at four. Tell every- 
one.” 

We avoided the tube and cut across the lawn for privacy. Comrade 
handed Montross the envelope. He slid the photograph out and I had one 
last glimpse. This time the dead man left me cold. In fact, I was embar- 
rassed. Although he kept a straight face, I knew what Montross was 
thinking about me. Maybe he was right. I wished he would put the picture 
away. He was not one of us; he could not understand. I wondered if Tree 
had come far enough yet to appreciate corpse porn. 

“It’s the only copy,” Comrade said. 

“All right.” Finally Montross crammed it into the pocket of his shorts. 

“You tapped our files; you know it’s true.” 

“So?” 

“So enough!” I said. “You have what you wanted.” 

“I’ve already explained.” Montross was being patient. “Getting this 
back doesn’t close the case. I have to take preventive measures.” 

“Meaning you turn Comrade into a carrot.” 


MR. BOY 


163 



“Meaning I repair him. You’re the one who took him to the chop shop. 
Deregulated wiseguys are dangerous. Maybe not to you, but certainly 
to property and probably to other people. It’s a straightforward procedure. 
He’ll be fully functional afterward.” 

“Plug your procedure, jack. We’re leaving.” 

Both wiseguys stopped. “I thought you agreed,” said Montross. 

“Let’s go. Comrade.” I grabbed his arm but he shook me off. 

“Where?” he said. 

“Anywhere! Just so I never have to listen to this again.” I pulled again, 
angry at Comrade for stalling. Your wiseguy is supposed to anticipate 
your needs, do whatever you want. 

“But we haven’t even tried to . . 

“Forget it then. I give up.” I pushed him toward Montross. “You want 
to chat, fine, go right ahead. Let him rip the top of your head off while 
you’re at it, but I’m not sticking around to watch.” 

I checked the pool but Tree, Stennie, and Janet had already gone. I 
went through the Glass House and caught up with them in the tube to 
the sculpture gallery. 

“Can I talk to you?” I put my arm around Tree’s waist, just like I had 
seen grownups do. “In private.” I could tell she was annoyed to be sep- 
arated from Janet. “We’ll catch up.” I waved Stennie on. “See you over 
there.” 

She waited until they were gone. “What?” Her hair, slick from swim- 
ming, left dark spots where it brushed her silver jaunts. 

“I want to leave. We’ll call my mom’s car.” She did not look happy. 
“I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.” 

“But we just got here. Give it a chance.” 

“I’ve been to too many of these things.” 

“Then you shouldn’t have come.” 

Silence. I wanted to tell her about Montross — everything — but not 
here. Anyone could come along and the tube was so hot. I was desperate 
to get her away, so I lied. “Believe me, you’re not going to like this. I 
know.” I tugged at her waist. “Sometimes even I think smash parties 
are too much.” 

“We’ve had this discussion before,” she said. “Obviously you weren’t 
listening. I don’t need you to decide for me whether I’m going to like 
something, Mr. Boy. I have two parents too many; I don’t need another.” 
She stepped away from me. “Hey, I’m sorry if you’re having a bad time. 
But do you really need to spoil it for me?” She turned and strode down 
the tube toward the gallery, her beautiful hair slapping against her back. 
I watched her go. 

“But I’m in trouble,” I muttered to the empty tube — and then was 
disgusted with myself because I did not have the guts to say it to Tree. 

164 JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



I was too scared she would not care. I stood there, sweating. For a moment 
the stink of doubt filled my nostrils. Then I followed her in. I could not 
abandon her to the extremists. 

The gallery was jammed now; maybe a hundred kids swarmed across 
the balconies and down the stairs. Some perched along the edges, their 
feet scuffing the white brick. Happy had turned up the volume. 

. . according to Guinness, was set at the University of Oklahoma in 
Norman, Oklahoma, in 2012. Three minutes and fourteen seconds.” The 
crowd rumbled in disbelief. “The challenge states each piece must be 
small enough to pass through a hole thirty centimeters in diameter.” 

I worked my way to an opening beside a rubber tree. Happy posed on 
the keyboard of the piano. Freddy the 'teddy and the gorilla brothers, 
Mike and Bubba, lined up beside her. “No mechanical tools are allowed.” 
She gestured at an armory of axes, sledgehammers, spikes, and crowbars 
laid out on the floor. A paper plate spun across the room. I could not see 
Tree. 

“This piano is over two hundred years old,’’ Happy continued, “which 
means the white keys are ivory.” She plunked a note. “Dead elephants!” 
Everybody heaved a sympathetic awww. “The blacks are ebony, hacked 
from the rain forest.” Another note, less reaction. “It deserves to die.” 

Applause. Comrade and I spotted each other at almost the same time. 
He and Montross stood toward the rear of the lower balcony. He gestured 
for me to come down; I ignored him. 

“Do you boys have anything to say?” Happy said. 

“Yeah.” Freddy hefted an ax. “Let’s make landfill.” 

I ducked around the rubber tree and heard the crack of splitting wood, 
the iron groan of a piano frame yielding its last music. The spectators 
hooted approval. As I bumped past kids, searching for Tree, the instru- 
ment’s death cry made me think of taking a hammer to Montross. If 
fights broke out, no one would care if Comrade and I dragged him outside. 
I wanted to beat him until he shuddered and came unstrung and his 
works glinted in the thudding August light. It would make me feel ex- 
treme again. Crunch! Kids shrieked, “Go, go, go!” The party was lifting 
off and taking me with it. 

“You are Mr. Boy Cage.” Abruptly Shikibu’s microcam eyes were in 
my face. “We know your famous mother.” He had to shout to be heard. 
“I have a question.” 

“Go away.” 

"Thirty seconds.” A girl’s voice boomed over the speakers. 

“U.S. and Japan are very different, yes?” He pressed closer. “We honor 
ancestors, our past. You seem to hate so much.” He gestured at the 
gallery. “Why?” 

“Maybe we’re spoiled.” I barged past him. 


MR. BOY 


165 



I saw Freddy swing a sledgehammer at the exposed frame. Clang! A 
chunk of twisted iron clattered across the brick floor, trailing broken 
strings. Happy scooped the mess up and shoved it through a thirty cen- 
timeter hole drilled in an upright sheet of particle board. 

The timekeeper called out again. "One minute.” I had come far enough 
around the curve of the stairs to see her. 

‘Treemonisha!” 

She glanced up, her face alight with pleasure, and waved. I was fright- 
ened for her. She was climbing into the same box I needed to break out 
of. So I rushed down the stairs to rescue her — little boy knight in shining 
armor — and ran right into Comrade’s arms. 

“I’ve decided,” he said. "Mnye vcyaw ostoyeblo.” 

“Great.” I had to get to Tree. “Later, okay?” When I tried to go by, he 
picked me up. I started thrashing. It was the first fight of the afternoon 
and I lost. He carried me over to Montross. The gallery was in an uproar. 

“All set,” said Montross. “I’ll have to borrow him for a while. I’ll drop 
him off tonight at your mom. Then we’re done.” 

“Done?” I kept trying to get free but Comrade crushed me against him. 

“It’s what you want.” His body was so hard. “And what your mom 
wants.” 

“Mom? She doesn’t even know.” 

“She knows everything,” Comrade said. “She watches you constantly. 
What else does she have to do all day?” He let me go. “Remember you 
said I was sloppy getting the picture? I wasn’t; it was a clean operation. 
Only someone tipped Datasafe off.” 

“But she promised. Besides that makes no . . .” 

"Two minutes,” Tree called. 

“. . . but he threatened me,” I said. “He was going to blow me up. 
Needle me in the mall.” 

“We wouldn’t do that.” Montross spread his hands innocently. “It’s 
against the law.” 

“Yeah? Well, then drop dead, jack.” I poked a finger at him. “Deal’s 
off.” 

“No, it’s not,” said Comrade. “It’s too late. This isn’t about the picture 
anymore, Mr. Boy; it’s about you. You weren’t supposed to change but 
you did. Maybe they botched the last stunting, maybe it’s Treemonisha. 
Whatever, you’ve outgrown me, the way I am now. So I have to change, 
too, or else I’ll keep getting in your way.” 

He always had everything under control; it made me crazy. He was 
too good at running my life. “You should have told me Mom turned you 
in.” Crash! I felt like the crowd was inside my head, screaming. 

“You could’ve figured it out, if you wanted to. Besides, if I had said 
anything, your mom wouldn’t have bothered to be subtle. She would’ve 

166 JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



squashed me. She still might, even though I’m being fixed. Only by then 
I won’t care. Rosproyebi tvayou mat!” 

I heard Tree finishing the count. ". . . twelve, thirteen, fourteen!” No 
record today. Some kids began to boo, others laughed. “Time’s up, you 
losers!” 

I glared at the two wiseguys. Montross was busy emulating sincerity. 
Comrade found a way to grin for me, the same smirk he always wore 
when he tortured the greeter. “It’s easier this way.” 

Easier. My life was too plugging easy. I had never done anything 
important by myself. Not even grow up. I wanted to smash something. 

“Okay,” I said. “You asked for it.” 

Comrade turned to Montross and they shook hands. I thought next 
they might clap one another on the shoulder and whistle as they strolled 
off into the sunset together. I felt like puking. “Have fun,” said Comrade. 
"Da svedanya” 

“Sure.” Betraying Comrade, my best friend, brought me both pain and 
pleasure at once — but not enough to satisfy the shrieking wildness within 
me. The party was just starting. 

Happy stood beaming beside the ruins of the Steinway. Although noth- 
ing of what was left was more than half a meter tall, Freddy, Mike and 
Bubba had given up now that the challenge was lost. Kids were already 
surging down the stairs to claim their share of the swag. I went along 
with them. 

“Don’t worry,” announced Happy. “Plenty for everyone. Come take 
what you like. Remember, guns and animals outside, if you want to hunt. 
The safeties won’t release unless you go through the door. Watch out for 
one another, people, we don’t want anyone shot.” 

A bunch of kids were wrestling over the turkey cage; one of them 
staggered backwards and knocked into me. “Gobble, gobble,” she said. 
I shoved her back. . , 

“Mr. Boy! Over here.” Tree, Stennie, and Janet were waiting on the 
far side of the gallery. As I crossed to them. Happy gave the sign and 
Stone Kinkaid hurled the four thousand year old ceramic hippo against 
the wall. It shattered. Everybody cheered. In the upper balconies, they 
were playing catch with a frog. 

“You see who kept time?” said Janet. 

“Didn’t need to see,” I said. “I could hear. They probably heard in 
Elkhart. So you like it. Tree?” 

“It’s about what I expected: dumb but fun. I don’t think they ...” The 
frog sailed from the top balcony and splatted at our feet. Its legs twitched 
and guts spilled from its open mouth. I watched Tree’s smile turn brittle. 
She seemed slightly embarrassed, as if she had just been told the price 
of something she could not afford. 


MR. BOY 


167 



“This is going to be a war zone soon,” Stennie said. 

“Yeah, let’s fade.” Janet towed Stennie to the stairs, swerving around 
the three boys lugging Our Lady of the Bathtub out to the firing range. 

“Wait.” I blocked Tree. “You’re here, so you have to destroy something. 
Get with the program.” 

“I have to?” She seemed doubtful. “Oh all right — but no animals.” 

A hail of antique Coke bottles crashed around Happy as she directed 
traffic at the dwindling swag heap. “Hey people, please be very careful 
where you throw things.” Her amplified voice blasted us as we ap- 
proached. The first floor was a graveyard of broken glass and piano bones 
and bloody feathers. Most of the good stuff was already gone. 

“Any records left?” I said. 

Happy wobbled closer to me. “What?” She seemed punchy, as if stunned 
by the success of her own party. 

“The box I gave you. From Stennie.” She pointed; I spotted it under 
some cages and grabbed it. Tree and the others were on the stairs. Outside 
, I could hear the crackle of small arms fire. I caught up. 

“Sir! Mr. Dinosaur, please.” The press still lurked on the upper balcony. 
“Matsuo Shikibu, Japanese telelink NHK. Could I speak with you for 
a moment?” 

“Excuse me, but this jack and I have some unfinished business.” I 
handed Stennie the records and cut in front. He swayed and lashed his 
tail upward to counterbalance their weight. 

“Remember me?” I bowed to Shikibu. 

“My apologies if I offended ! . .” 

“Hey, Matsuo — can I call you Matsuo? This is your first smash party, 
right? Please, eyes on me. I want to explain why I was rude before. Help 
you understand the local customs. You see, we’re kind of self-conscious 
here in the U.S. We don’t like it when someone just watches while we 
play. You either join in or you’re not one of us.” 

My little speech drew a crowd. “What’s he talking about?” said Janet. 
She was shushed. 

“So if you drop by our party and don’t have fun, people resent you,” 
I told him. “No one came here today to put on a show. This is who we 
are. What we believe in.” 

“Yeah!” Stennie was cheerleading for the extreme Mr. Boy of old. “Tell 
him.” Too bad he did not realize it was his final appearance. What was 
Mr. Boy without his Comrade? “Make him feel some pain.” 

I snatched an album from the top of the stack, slipped the record out 
and held close it to Shikibu’s microcam eyes. “What does this say?” 

He craned his neck to read the label. “John Coltrane, Giant Steps.” 

“Very good.” I grasped the record with both hands, and raised it over 
my head for all to see. “We’re not picky, Matsuo. We welcome everyone. 

168 JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



Therefore today it is my honor to initiate you — and the home audience 
back on NHK. If you’re still watching, you’re part of this too.” I broke 
the record over his head. 

He yelped and staggered backward and almost tripped over a dead cat. 
Stone Kinkaid caught him and propped him up. “Congratulations,” said 
Stennie, as he waved his claws at Japan. “You’re all extremists now.” 

Shikibu gaped at me, his microcam eyes askew. A couple of kids 
clapped. 

“There’s someone else here who has not yet joined us.” I turned on 
Tree. “Another spectator.” Her smile faded. 

“You leave her alone,” said Janet. “What are you, crazy?” 

“I’m not going to touch her.” I held up empty hands. “No, I just want 
her to ruin something. That’s why you came, isn’t it. Tree? To get a 
taste?” I rifled through the box until I found what I wanted. “How about 
this?” I thrust it at her. 

“Oh yeah,” said Stennie, “I meant to tell you. . . .” 

She took the record and scoped it briefly. When she glanced up at me, 
I almost lost my nerve. 

“Matsuo Shikibu, meet Treemonisha Joplin.” I clasped my hands be- 
hind my back so no one could see me tremble. “The great-great-great 
granddaughter of the famous American composer, Scott Joplin. Yes, Ja- 
pan, we’re all celebrities here in New Canaan. Now please observe.” I 
read the record for him. "Piano Rags by Scott Joplin, Volume III. Who 
knows, this might be the last copy. We can only hope. So, what are you 
waiting for. Tree? You don’t want to be a Joplin anymore? Just wait 
until your folks get a peek at this. We’ll even send GD a copy. Go ahead, 
enjoy.” 

“Smash it!” The kids around us took up the chant. “Smash it!” Shikibu 
adjusted his lenses. 

“You think I won’t?” Tree pulled out the disc and threw the sleeve off 
the balcony. “This is a piece of junk, Mr. Boy.” She laughed and then 
shattered the album against the wall. She held onto a shard. “It doesn’t 
mean anything to me.” 

I heard Janet whisper. “What’s going on?” 

“I think they’re having an argument.” 

“You want me to be your little dream cush.” Tree tucked the piece of 
broken plastic into the pocket of my baggies. “The stiff from nowhere 
who knows nobody and does nothing without Mr. Boy. So you try to scare 
me off. You tell me you’re so rich, you can afford to hate yourself. Stay 
home, you say, it’s too dangerous, we’re all crazy. Well, if you’re so sure 
this is poison, how come you’ve still got your wiseguy and your cash 
cards? Are you going to move out of your mom, leave town, stop getting 
stunted? You’re not giving it up, Mr. Boy, so why should I?” 


MR. BOY 


169 



Shikibu turned his camera eyes on me. No one spoke. 

“You’re right,” I said. “She’s right.” I could not save anyone until I 
saved myself. I felt the wildness lifting me to it. I leapt onto the balcony 
wall and shouted for everyone to hear. “Shut up and listen everybody! 
You’re all invited to my place, okay?” 

There was one last thing to smash. 

“Stop this, Peter.” The greeter no longer thought I was cute. “What’re 
you doing?” She trembled as if the kids spilling into her were an infection. 

“I thought you’d like to meet my friends,” I said. A few had stayed 
behind with Happy, who had decided to sulk after I hijacked her guests. 
The rest had followed me home in a caravan so I could warn off the sentry 
robots. It was already a hall-of-fame bash. “Treemonisha Joplin, this is 
my mom. Sort of” 

“Hi,” Tree held out her hand uncertainly. 

The greeter was no longer the human doormat. “Get them out of me.” 
She was too jumpy to be polite. “Right now!” 

Someone turned up a boombox. Skitter music filled the room like a 
siren. Tree said something I could not hear. When I put a hand to my 
ear, she leaned close and said, “Don’t be so mean, Mr. Boy. I think she’s 
really frightened.” 

I grinned and nodded. “I’ll tell cook to make us some snacks.” 

Bubba and Mike carried boxes filled with the last of the swag and set 
them on the coffee table. Kids fanned out, running their hands along her 
wrinkled blood-hot walls, bouncing on the furniture. Stennie waved at 
me as he led a bunch upstairs for a tour. A leftover cat had gotten loose 
and was hissing and scratching underfoot. Some twisted kids had already 
stripped and were rolling in the floor hair, getting ready to have sex. 

“Get dressed, you.” The greeter kicked at them as she coiled her um- 
bilical to keep it from being trampled. She retreated to her wall plug. 
“You’re hurting me.” Although her voice rose to a scream, only half a 
dozen kids heard her. She went limp and sagged to the floor. 

The whole room seemed to throb, as if to some great heartbeat, and 
the lights went out. It took a while for someone to kill the sound on the 
boombox. “What’s wrong?” Voices called out. “Mr. Boy? Lights.” 

Both doorbones swung open and I saw a bughead silhouetted against 
the twilit sky. Shikibu in his microcams. “Party’s over,” Mom said over 
her speaker system. There was nervous laughter. “Leave before I call the 
cops. Peter, go to your room right now. I want to speak to you.” 

As the stampede began, I found Tree’s hand. “Wait for me?” I pulled 
her close. “I’ll only be a minute.” 

“What are you going to do?” She sounded frightened. It felt good to be 
taken so seriously. 

170 


JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



“I’m moving out, chucking all this. I’m going to be a working stiff.” I 
chuckled. “Think your dad would give me a job?” 

“Look out, dumbscut! Hey, hey. Don’t push!” 

Tree dragged me out of the way. “You’re crazy.” 

“I know. That’s why I have to get out of Mom.” ^ 

“Listen,” she said, “you’ve never been poor, you have no idea. . . . Only 
a rich kid would think it’s easy being a stiff. Just go up, apologize, tell 
her it won’t happen again. Then change things later on, if you want. 
Believe me, life will be a lot simpler if you hang onto the money.” 

“I can’t. Will you wait?” 

“You want me to tell you it’s okay to be stupid, is that it? Well, I’ve 
been poor, Mr. Boy, and still am, and I don’t recommend it. So don’t 
expect me to stand around and clap while you throw away something 
I’ve always wanted.” She spun away from me and I lost her in the dark- 
ness. I wanted to catch up with her but I knew I had to do Mom now or 
I would lose my nerve. 

As I was fumbling my way upstairs I heard stragglers coming down. 
“On your right,” I called. Bodies nudged by me. 

“Mr. Boy, is that you?” I recognized Stennie’s voice. 

“He’s gone,” I said. 

Seven flights up, the lights were on. Nanny waited on the landing 
outside my rooms, her umbilical stretched nearly to its limit. She was 
the only remote which was physically able to get to my floor and this 
was as close as she could come. 

It had been a while since I had seen her; Mom did not use her much 
anymore and I rarely visited, even though the nursery was only one 
flight down. But this was the remote who used to pick me up when I 
cried and who had changed my diapers and who taught me how to turn 
on my roombrain. She had skin so pale you could almost see veins and 
long black hair piled high on her head. I never thought of her as having 
a body because she always wore dark turtlenecks and long woolen skirts 
and silky panty hose. Nanny was a smile and warm hands and the smell 
of fresh pillowcases. Once upon a time I thought her the most beautiful 
creature in the world. Back then I would have done anything she said. 

She was not smiling now. “I don’t know how you expect me to trust 
you anymore, Peter.” Nanny had never been a very good scold. “Those 
brats were out of control. I can’t let you put me in danger this way.” 

“If you wanted someone to trust, maybe you shouldn’t have had me 
stunted. You got exactly what you ordered, the neverending kid. Well, 
kids don’t have to be responsible.” 

“What do you mean, what I ordered? It’s what you wanted, too.” 

“Is it? Did you ever ask? I was only ten, the first time, too young to 
know better. For a long time I did it to please you. Getting stunted was 


MR. BOY 


171 



the only thing I did that seemed important to you. But you never ex- 
plained. You never sat me down and said ‘This is the life you’ll have and 
this is what you’ll miss and this is how you’ll feel about it.’ ” 

“You want to grow up, is that it?” She was trying to threaten me. “You 
want to yvork and worry and get old and die someday?” She had no idea 
what we were talking about. 

“I can’t live this way anymore, Nanny.” 

At first she acted stunned, as if I had spoken in Albanian. Then her 
expression hardened when she realized she had lost her hold on me. She 
was ugly when she was angry. “They put you up to this.” Her gaze 
narrowed in accusation. “That little black cush you’ve been seeing. Those 
realists!” 

I had always managed to hide my anger from Mom. Right up until 
then. “How do you know about her?” I had never told her about 'Tree. 

“Peter, they live in a mall!” 

Comrade was right. “You’ve been spying on me.” When she did not 
deny it, I went berserk. “You liar.” I slammed my fist into her belly. 
“You said you wouldn’t watch.” She staggered and fell onto her umbilical, 
crimping it. As she twitched on the floor, I pounced. “You promised.” I 
slapped her face. “Promised.” I hit her again. Her hair had come undone 
and her eyes rolled back in their sockets and her face was slack. She 
made no effort to protect herself. Mom was retreating from this remote, 
too, but I was not going to let her get away. 

“Mom!” I rolled off Nanny. “I’m coming up. Mom! You hear? Get ready.” 
I was crying; it had been a long time since I had cried. Not something 
Mr. Boy did. 

I scrambled up to the long landing at the shoulders. At one end another 
circular stairway wound up into the torch; in the middle four steps led 
into the neck. It was the only doorbone I had never seen open; I had no 
idea how to get through. 

“Mom, I’m here.” I pounded. “Mom! You hear me?” 

Silence. 

“Let me in. Mom.” I smashed myself against the doorbone. Pain 
branched through my shoulder like lightning but it felt great because 
Mom shuddered from the impact. I backed up and, in a frenzy, hurled 
myself again. Something warm dripped on my cheek. She was bleeding 
from the hinges. I aimed a vicious kick at the doorbone and it banged 
open. I went through. 

For years I had imagined that if only I could get into the head I could 
meet my real mother. Touch her. I had always wondered what she looked 
like; she got reshaped just after I was born. When I was little I used to 
think of her as a magic princess glowing with fairy light. Later I pictured 
her as one or another of my friends’ moms, only better dressed. After I 


172 


JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



had started getting twanked, I was afraid she might be just a brain 
floating in nutrient solution, like in some pricey memory bank. All 
wrong. 

The interior of the head was dark and absolutely freezing. There was 
no sound except for the hum of refrigeration units. “Mom?” My voice 
echoed in the empty space. I stumbled and caught myself against a 
smooth wall. Not skin, like everywhere else in Mom — metal. The tears 
froze on my face. 

“There’s nothing for you here,” she said. “This is a clean room. You’re 
compromising it. You must leave immediately.” 

Sterile environment, metal walls, the bitter cold that superconductors 
needed. I did not need to see. No one lived here. It had never occurred 
to me that there was no Mom to touch. She had downloaded, become an 
electron ghost tripping icy logic gates. “How long have you been dead?” 

“This isn’t where you belong,” she said. 

I shivered. “How long?” 

“Go away,” she said. 

So I did. I had to. I could not stay very long in her secret place or I 
would die of the cold. 

As I reeled down the stairs. Mom herself seemed to shift beneath my 
feet and I saw her as if she were a stranger. Dead — and I had been living 
in a tomb. I ran past Nanny; she still sprawled where I had left her. All 
those years I had loved her, I had been in love with death. Mom had been 
sucking life from me the way her refrigerators stole the warmth from 
my body. 

Now I knew there was no way I could stay, no matter what anyone 
said. I knew it was not going to be easy leaving, and not just because of 
the money. For a long time Mom had been my entire world. But I could 
not let her use me to pretend she was alive, or I would end up like her. 

I realized now that the door had always stayed locked because Mom 
had to hide what she had become. If I wanted, I could have destroyed 
her. Downloaded intelligences have no more rights than cars or wiseguys. 
Mom was legally dead and I was her only heir. I could have had her shut 
off, her body razed. But somehow it was enough to go, to walk away from 
my inheritance. I was scared and yet with every step I felt lighter. Hap- 
pier. Extremely free. 

I had not expected to find Tree waiting at the doorbone, chatting with 
Comrade as if nothing had happened. “I just had to see if you were really 
the biggest fool in the world,” she said. 

“Out.” I pulled her through the door. “Before I change my mind.” 

Comrade started to follow us. “No, not you.” I turned and stared back 
at the heads on his window coat. I had not intended to see him again; 


MR. BOY 


173 



I had wanted to be gone before Montross returned him. “Look, I’m giving 
you back to Mom. She needs you more than I do.” 

If he had argued, I might have given in. The old, unregulated Comrade 
would have said something. But he just slumped a little and nodded and 
I knew that he was dead, too. The thing in front of me was another ghost. 
He and Mom were two of a kind. “Pretend you’re her kid, maybe she’ll 
like that.” I patted his shoulder. 

"Prekrassnaya ideya,” he said. "Spaceba.” 

“You’re welcome,” I said. 

Tree and I trotted together down the long driveway. Robot sentries 
crossed the lawn and turned their spotlights on us. I wanted to tell her 
she was right. I had probably just done the single most irresponsible 
thing of my life — and I had high standards. Still, I could not imagine 
how being poor could be worse than being rich and hating yourself I had 
seen enough of what it was like to be dead. It was time to try living. 

“Are we going someplace, Mr. Boy?” Tree squeezed my hand. “Or are 
we just wandering around in the dark?” 

“Mr. Boy is a damn stupid name, don’t you think?” I laughed. “Call 
me Pete.” I felt like a kid again. # 



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174 


JAMES PATRICK KELLY 



ON BOCKS 


by 

Norman Spinrad 


ALL’S WELL THAT 
ENDS WELL 


Buying Time, Joe Haldeman, 
Morrow, $18.95 (he) 

Sunglasses After Dark, Nancy A. 
Collins, NAL/Onyx, $3.95 (pb) 

On My Way to Paradise, Dave 
Wolverton, Bantam/Spectra, $4.95 
(pb) 

Hyperion, Dan Simmons, Foun- 
dation/Doubleday, $18.95 (he) / $6.95 
(pb) 

Red Prophet, Orson Scott Card, 
TOR, $17.95 (he) / $3.95 (pb) 

As a writer, critic, sometime 
teacher of writing, and as just an- 
other reader looking for something 
that leaves me satisfied. I’ve come 
to notice that most novels that 
leave me dissatisfied, partially sat- 
isfied, or royally pissed off, do so 
because they end badly. 

I’m not talking about manu- 
scripts that one reads in writers, 
workshops, or stuff that editors re- 
ject, or published books that I give 
up on after a chapter or two be- 
cause the style is tedious or the 
story is obviously one that I’ve read 
a hundred times before. I’m talking 
about novels that are written well 
enough, with characters that are 


engaging enough, and a story that 
is interesting enough, to keep me 
reading straight through to the 
end, and then leave me feeling 
emotionally and esthetically 
cheated, like good sex that some- 
how manages to, uh, peter out 
short of orgasm. 

This applies to short stories, too, 
but since short stories, by their 
very nature, rely much more heav- 
ily than novels upon a single suc- 
cessful final effect, much fewer 
well-written short stories that end 
up nowhere manage to find their 
way into print. Although admit- 
tedly, what with the endless an- 
thologies of “shared universe’’ 
stories being published these days, 
that is not quite as true as it used 
to be, for reasons that will become 
apparent, if they are not apparent 
already. 

What constitutes a satisfying 
ending? That depends partially on 
the general expectations a reader 
brings to a story or novel, and par- 
tially upon the specific expecta- 
tions that the writer builds up in 
the course of telling the tale before 
it arrives there. 


175 



For the devotee of relatively un- 
sophisticated action-adventure 
stuff, a satisfying ending is a happy 
ending in which the hero finally 
thrashes the villain and gets the 
girl. This ending satisfies the ac- 
tion-adventure reader for two rea- 
sons, one of them a good deal more 
subtle than the other. 

Action-adventure fiction is for- 
mula fiction, and the formula con- 
sists of establishing a psychic 
identification between the reader 
and a lead character, running the 
hero through a series of confron- 
tations with a villain, or, more sub- 
tly, with a frustrating situation, a 
series of secondary tensions and 
partial releases that build up into 
the greatest tension of all, which 
is released at the climactic moment 
of triumph, leaving the reader 
identifying with the hero’s apoth- 
eosis and feeling like he’s just won 
the heavyweight championship of 
the galaxy. 

If this sounds suspiciously like 
a literal mindfuck, well, it is. The 
harmonic parameters are more or 
less identical to the harmonic pa- 
rameters of a proper lay. 

As the man banging himself on 
the head with a mallet explained, 
I do it because it feels so good when 
I stop, which is why readers can 
enjoy identifying with a hero who 
suffers the punishments of an evil 
villain for the bulk of the reading 
experience. 

“What’s right is what you feel 
good after,” Ernest Hemingway 
put it somewhat more elegantly, 
and the action-adventure reader 


certainly feels good after the vi- 
carious pleasure of finally turning 
the tables on his fictional tormen- 
tors and hammering the bastards 
into the ground himself. 

But Hemingway was making a 
moral point, and the more subtle 
reason why the well-done action- 
adventure formula ending satisfies 
is that it assures the readers that 
the universe is indeed morally just, 
that the doer of evil deeds will in 
the end gain no satisfaction there- 
from, and that the virtuous man or 
woman, to wit themselves, will in- 
deed end up feeling good for having 
done right. 

This is why there are still so 
many World War II stories and 
films still pleasing audiences, and 
why World War II is often nostal- 
gically referred to as the “Last 
Good War.” 

It was the last war that really 
fulfilled the action adventure for- 
mula. In Adolf Hitler and the Na- 
zis, it had villains far more perfectly 
evil than any novelist would have 
dared to invent, the Ultimate Black 
Barts who annihilated whole cities 
and threw people into gas ovens in 
their totally amoral and totally 
ruthless passion to enslave the 
world. For the first two thirds of 
the story, they swept all before 
them, and then the champions of 
right, the defenders of civilization, 
pounded them to a pulp from the 
air and ground what was left to 
rubble beneath the treads of their 
tanks. 

This is also why World War II 
has been the template for so many 


176 


NORMAN SPINRAD 



science fiction and fantasy novels, 
why Darth Vader wore nice shiny 
SS black, why Sauron is more or 
less painted as Satan in The Lord 
of the Rings and why, in the film 
version of Dune, David Lynch gave 
the Baron Harkonnen disgusting 
pustules and had the Beast Rabbin 
squash a cute mammal in a wine 
glass in order to drink the blood. 
When you’re trying to convince 
your audience that your Black Hat 
is the moral equivalent of Adolf 
Hitler, you really better pull out 
all the stops! 

Those of us who are not quite so 
convinced that moral justice is built 
into the universe require some- 
thing somewhat more complex and 
subtle in a satisfying ending to a 
tale than being the hero who fi- 
nally wins World War 11. We re- 
quire an ending that arises out of 
the natures of the characters, their 
interactions, and the events of the 
story — which is to say the plot — and 
resolves the story in terms of the 
theme that the writer has made the 
spiritual and intellectual core of 
the work. 

We’re not interested so much in 
being reassured that good always 
defeats evil, a proposition which we 
frequently see violated in the real 
world, as in being taught some- 
thing, being made to feel some- 
thing, that reveals some insight 
into the nature of the morally im- 
perfect universe in which we un- 
fortunately happen to find 
ourselves. 

Now, while achieving this effect 
may seem a much more difficult 


writing task than describing how 
the hero skewers the villain in the 
climatic swordfight, it is also a 
good deal less specific in its re- 
quirements, meaning that while 
there is only one real right way to 
end an action-adventure tale, there 
are an infinite number of other 
ways to successfully conclude a 
novel. Admittedly, it also means 
that there are an infinite number 
of ways to fail. 

But that’s one of the things that 
makes good fiction, or sometimes 
even fiction that is only trying to 
be good, so much more interesting 
than the action-adventure format. 
If the writer isn’t a complete boob, 
and if the editor isn’t totally out to 
lunch, you know how an action-ad- 
venture novel is going to end before 
you pick it up. 

With a novel that is not following 
the familiar moral formula, how- 
ever, you don’t know where you’re 
going when you start, and if it’s 
good, you can’t guess the ending till 
you come to it. 

And then, if it’s really good, if the 
ending which you have not antic- 
ipated nevertheless is revealed as 
being more or less inevitable, as 
arising out of a confluence of the 
character dynamics, the events of 
the plot, the nature of the universe 
in which the story is told, and the 
thematic point the writer has cre- 
ated all that has gone before to 
elucidate, why then you have a 
true satori, closure, the resolution 
of the symphony in the final chord, 
a work of fiction that lives on in 
the heart and mind. 


ON BOOKS: ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL 


177 



With science fiction, or for that 
matter with certain kinds of fan- 
tasy, such a successful resolution 
doesn’t even have to involve the 
vanquishment of evil, the overcom- 
ing of a threat, or even the survival 
of jeopardy. 

Science fiction in particular is 
suited to resolutions that are in- 
tellectual, as in much of Isaac As- 
imov’s best work, and not just in 
the Lije Bailey-R. Daneel Olivaw 
science fiction mysteries, where, as 
in all mysteries, the climax has to 
be an intellectual event, the solu- 
tion thereof. 

Much hard science fiction — and 
a lot of science fiction that isn’t so 
hard — has at its thematic heart the 
consequences to its characters of 
new scientific discoveries, an al- 
teration in the technosphere, a con- 
frontation with alien environments 
or alien consciousnesses, which 
creates in the reader at least the 
illusion of having experienced the 
world anew or even having been a 
new kind of creature themselves, 
and, at the end, if it is a good one, 
of achieving a kind of intellectual 
and emotional enlightenment. 

Of course the characteristic failed 
ending of this sort of novel is a 
burst of unconvincing transcen- 
dentalism, an endemic failing of 
otherwise successful science fiction 
time out of mind. 

This problem would seem to arise 
out of the literary nature of science 
fiction itself, rather than out of the 
current commercial pressures which 
we will get to later, and indeed, in 


a way, the danger gets worse the 
better the book is. 

When an action-adventure writer 
paints himself into a corner, he can 
always resort to “with a mighty 
effort, he leapt out of the pit.” 

But when a science fiction writer 
of substance spends a whole novel 
skillfully creating a sense of depth 
and verisimilitude and preparing 
the reader for a resolution on the 
same reality-level, it just won’t do 
to have the hero cobble together 
satori out of paperclips and tooth- 
picks, or have the Horse Marines 
arrive with enlightenment in the 
nick of time. 

Take Joe Haldeman’s Buying 
Time. Haldeman is one of the sol- 
idest writers in the field, every 
novel he’s published (save an un- 
fortunate novelization or two that 
he’d probably rather forget) is a 
thoughtfully well-paced, well-re- 
alized book, with interesting char- 
acters and pleasurable prose. The 
sort of writer whose work you pick 
up without scanning the blurb copy 
and know you won’t be bored. 

Buying Time is no exception. 
Haldeman creates a twenty-first 
century in which you can believe, 
which not only sounds right, but 
feels right, with a wealth of tech- 
nological extrapolations, big and 
small, a really nice rendering of 
quotidian life, a fine attention to 
telling detail. So far, so good. 

In this twenty-first century, the 
Stileman process has enabled se- 
lected people to become immortal, 
a cause for some literary trepida- 
tion, for while immortality as a 


178 


NORMAN SPINRAD 



theme has produced a certain num- 
ber of masterpieces, it has also 
served as the McGuffin for even 
more superficial power fantasies 
and transcendental wanks. 

But Haldeman, good hard sci- 
ence writer and even better ironic 
realist that he is, runs some nice 
changes on the immortality Mc- 
Guffin by giving us so-called im- 
mortality as it would no doubt 
really be, at least in his timeframe. 

The Stileman process isn’t a 
magic pill or virus and it doesn’t 
really make people immortal. Each 
treatment renews your body for 
roughly a decade, and it is long, 
complex, and painful. 

Your body? 

Maybe not, kiddo. 

The Stileman process is also very 
expensive. You can only get it 
through the Stileman Foundation, 
and the price is everything you 
have, with a million dollar floor. 

The evil Foundation supplying 
immortality for the rich while the 
poor and the ordinary must content 
themselves with the Biblical ration 
of three-score and ten? Which must 
then be destroyed by the virtuous 
hero who forswears immortality 
for the sake of justice? Oh no, stop 
me if I’ve read this before! In fact. 
I’ve written it myself. 

But no, Haldeman is a good deal 
more subtle than that. He provides 
the Stileman Foundation with a 
most interesting moral justifica- 
tion for what is usually conven- 
tionally regarded as villainy. 

If there is going to be an immor- 
tality treatment, it is going to be 


expensive, meaning reserved for 
the wealthy few who can afford it. 
Given that prospective immortals 
are going to have to be rich to begin 
with to afford their first treatment, 
immortality, or even life-extension 
like the Stileman process, is going 
to end up concentrating wealth, 
and therefore power, in the hands 
of a superwealthy immortal elite. 
Immortals will be selected by Dun 
and Bradstreet to begin with, and 
their long lives, even if they don’t 
teach them financial cunning and 
wisdom, will further enrich them 
via the process of compound inter- 
est, if nothing else. 

The Stileman Foundation charges 
everything you’ve accumulated be- 
fore each treatment precisely in 
order to prevent the establishment 
of such an immortal elite. If you’re 
rich, you can buy yourself your first 
treatment, but after that, you start 
at financial ground zero every ten 
years or so. 

If there is going to be expensive 
life-extension for the few, this would 
seem to be about as just and dem- 
ocratic a way to ration it as can be 
devised. Every ten years or so, each 
temporary immortal must accu- 
mulate his next million from scratch 
just like everyone else. Call it so- 
cial Darwinism at its most ex- 
treme, or call it the ultimate 
meritocracy, this system at least 
has the virtue of returning the im- 
mortal to the level of the indigent 
masses every decade or so. 

Well, sort of, for Haldeman is too 
much the realist to expect you to 
buy that completely. Even though 


ON BOOKS: ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL 


179 



it violates the contract, there are 
always shady round-about ways of 
stashing some assets somehow, and 
the more often you have to do it, 
the better you get at it. Also, of 
course, once you’ve made a million 
once, you’ve already got a better 
idea than most about how to do it 
again. And again. And again. 

So most Stileman repeaters have 
a way of causing money to stick to 
their fingers, or they wouldn’t be 
Stileman repeaters. They tend to 
stay ahead of the game far enough 
to buy their next treatment, but 
they can’t really hold on to enough 
capital to become an elite that 
rules the world. 

Dallas Barr is one of these Stile- 
man repeaters, one of the oldest 
people in the solar system. He’s 
been through many changes, and 
Haldeman does a fine job of ren- 
dering the psyche of a character 
who has to start from scratch every 
ten years or so, who has to make 
a million or die. 

Haldeman might have given us 
a fine novel just by showing us 
what he has to do to make his next 
million, or an even better one 
showing us what one becomes hav- 
ing to do it over and over again 
down through the decades, not just 
in terms of the pragmatics, which 
could certainly be interesting in 
and of themselves, but in terms of 
what sort of moral creature emerges 
from such a peculiar evolutionary 
process in a century or two. 

But that’s not what Haldeman 
has chosen to do. Instead, he has 
chosen to structure his novel around 


the deconstruction of his set-up, 
and that’s where the trouble would 
seem to begin. 

“The world is not what it seems,” 
is a common enough ploy, and 
there’s no particular reason why it 
can’t work again. Barr is drawn 
into a mystery concerning the 
Stileman Foundation, begins to 
learn things about its power-mad 
leadership, then things about the 
process itself, and . . . 

Well, it isn’t fair to give away too 
much of a story like this, which has 
the structure of a mystery of sorts, 
both criminal and scientific, espe- 
cially here, where Haldeman ably 
uses it all as the spine of an enter- 
taining and thoughtful novel that 
will not leave you outraged or feel- 
ing cheated at the end. 

But, given the quality of what 
has gone on before, indeed, espe- 
cially given the quality of what has 
gone on before, the ending did 
leave me feeling somewhat disap- 
pointed. 

In a tortuous attempt to eluci- 
date why without giving away any- 
thing that will ruin the book for 
readers, let me just say that not 
only does the protagonist end up 
more or less permanently immor- 
tal, but possessed of various tran- 
scendent powers dropped like an 
egg in his eternal beer, a member 
of a kind of new super race. “We 
blinked and found the playground 
had suddenly become infinite” as 
Haldeman says in the last line. 

Sorry, Joe, that’s the Disney ver- 
sion. Science fiction has seen all too 
much of it, and it weakens the res- 


180 


NORMAN SPINRAD 



olution of a novel that deserved 
much better. 

Haldeman set up a moral ques- 
tion about immortality that many 
writers have set up before. And, at 
least for my money, he came up 
with a moral solution to the prob- 
lem of expensive life extension that 
no one had ever thought of before. 
He saw his way through to at least 
a form of rough justice in an in- 
herently unjust situation. Bravo! 

But then he built Buying Time 
around a deconstruction of that 
moral creation, so I suppose it’s no 
wonder that he gave his protago- 
nist godlike powers at the end and 
hoped that it would satisfy the 
readers emotionally to the point 
where they wouldn’t notice that 
the ending wasn’t a resolution of 
the theme, but only a resolution of 
the plotline, that indeed it rather 
contradicts the thematic insights 
of the rest of the book. 

It’s about the oldest trick in the 
science fiction book. When the 
transcendence is thematically jus- 
tified by what has gone on before, 
it works on deeper levels too, in- 
deed on the deepest level there is, 
on a moral and spiritual level, but 
here it’s just the standard smoke 
and mirrors, no matter how well 
done. 

Which is not at all to say that a 
successful resolution to a novel 
necessarily has to be either a moral 
affirmation or a happy ending. No 
tragedy ever written does that, and 
tragedies represent some of the lit- 
erary masterpieces of the species. 

Perhaps on a somewhat less lofty 


level, take Sunglasses After Dark 
by Nancy A. Collins, an almost per- 
fect first novel that raises the no- 
torious splatterpunk genre peri- 
lously close to high art. And if you 
do not believe me, believe Mae 
West — “Goodness has nothing to 
do with it.” 

The central character of Sun- 
glasses After Dark is Sonja Blue, 
a vampire. No Transylvanian peas- 
ants and thick Hungarian accents 
here; as the title implies, she is a 
thoroughly modern, thoroughly ur- 
ban, more or less punk vampire, 
and Collins tells the whole story in 
a switchblade-sharp, wise-crack- 
ing, politically mordant, and ironic 
prose style that is a pleasure to 
read all the way through. 

The second viewpoint is Cath- 
erine Wheele, a televangelist with 
baleful psychic power who is a 
vampire of a different and far more 
evil sort. 

Sonja has been made a vampire 
in the usual manner, albeit in the 
back seat of a Rolls-Royce after 
having been picked up as a sappy 
would-be flower-child in a disco in 
Swinging London. From the mo- 
ment we meet her in a padded cell 
in the bughouse, Sonja invades 
people’s dreams, inflicts gory deaths 
on victims, justified and otherwise, 
leaves a trail of carnage and may- 
hem wherever she goes, and in gen- 
eral behaves like the creature of 
the modern night she is. 

But this is the nature Sonja has 
been given by the vampire who 
first stuck his fangs in her throat; 
while she commits endless acts of 


ON BOOKS: ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL 


181 



savagery, she is only following her 
nature, living out her karma. 

Indeed, she struggles against that 
nature. She spends long periods 
copping her hlood in bottles on the 
black market. She seeks to inflict 
her vengeance on the vampire who 
turned her into this thing. She is 
capable of acts of human kindness. 
She protects the third viewpoint 
character, Claude Hagerty, the 
hapless and well-meaning mental 
institution orderly who has gotten 
involved with her story. She may 
not exactly be a vampire with a 
heart of gold, but she is a vampire 
with mordant self-insight and a 
conscience. 

Catherine Wheele, on the other 
hand, is a self-made vampire. She 
has chosen to use her morally neu- 
tral psychic powers in the service 
of greed. Greed for money, greed 
for power, greed for sadistic sexual 
satisfaction. Indeed, she would have 
been just as big a moral monster 
without them. 

Without revealing too much of 
the plot, let me say that it is Cath- 
erine who had Sonja thrown into 
the nuthouse, for reasons having 
to do with continuing to fleece the 
rich mother of the girl she once 
was, and the central story is the 
conflict between them, though there 
is much, much more. 

Without revealing too much of 
the ending, let me say that while 
it could be taken as a ruthlessly 
moral one of a certain kind, only 
Sonja lives ever after, and not ex- 
actly happily. And the last line of 
the novel is one of those rare per- 


fect ones that not only ends it with 
an apt one-liner, but a one-liner 
that, without getting cute about it, 
makes one think about what one 
has just read with just the right 
subtle alteration. 

If there is such a thing as “splat- 
terpunk,” Sunglasses After Dark is 
surely an archetypal example, and 
if there is such a thing as a splat- 
terpunk masterpiece, Nancy A. 
Collins has written it, or at least 
what is far and away the best thing 
to emerge from this sensibility. 

And not just because the prose 
is startlingly mature and worldly- 
wise for a first novel, or because 
the story is perfectly paced, or be- 
cause the characters are well-ren- 
dered and original, or because the 
invention is arresting and the de- 
tailing vivid; Sunglasses After Dark 
is that rarity among first novels, 
and particularly, it would seem, 
among first novels in the extended 
SF genre, a novel that comes to a 
satisfying closure. 

The ending is truly satisfying 
because it brings together the ac- 
tion climax to the plot, the dynam- 
ics of the characters, and the 
psychological and moral themes of 
the novel in a way that neither vi- 
olates what has gone on before in 
terms of character transforma- 
tions, breaks tone, nor vitiates the 
integrity of the whole with a sappy 
forced happy ending. The grace 
note of the last line snaps it all off 
with a nice little flourish, like a 
matador turning his back on a bull 
he has just finished perfectly mes- 
merizing with his capework. 


182 


NORMAN SPINRAD 



More often, unfortunately, you 
get something like On My Way to 
Paradise, a first novel by Dave 
Wolverton. Though this is defi- 
nitely science fiction, and hardly 
punk — splatter, cyber, or other- 
wise — it shares several virtues of 
Sunglasses After Dark. Wolverton 
also is far more accomplished on a 
prose level than anyone has a right 
to expect from a first novelist. This 
is also a tough-minded novel of a 
somewhat different sort. Wolver- 
ton’s eye for description and his in- 
vention of telling detail is at least 
as good as Collins’s, and here it is 
much more important to the suc- 
cessful telling of the tale, since On 
My Way to Paradise takes place in 
a highly unstandard future Pan- 
ama, a starship in transit, and on 
Baker, the planet at the other end, 
where its cargo of mercenaries are 
being sent to fight for the Motoki 
Corporation against the Yabajin. 

Don Angelo Osic is one of these 
mercenaries, a morphogenic phar- 
macologist, a kind of scientific brujo 
in small-town Panama, who chances 
to rescue a mysterious woman 
named Tamara with connection to 
higher forces, involving himself in 
a series of messes that leaves him 
the murderer of a military assassin 
and unjustly charged with his friend 
Flaco’s murder, forcing him to sign 
on as Motoki Corporation gunfod- 
der in order to escape. 

Angelo narrates the whole story 
in first person, and Wolverton ob- 
viously knows Latin America and 
Latin Americans, for Angelo is no 
standard gringo in Hispanic cloth- 


ing. All the other major characters 
are Hispanic, and Wolverton’s fu- 
ture Panama and complex Latin 
American culture are a first-rate 
work of extrapolation, with politi- 
cal savvy and real cultural depth. 

The trouble begins in the long, 
long middle of the book, which 
takes place on the starship. Well, 
sort of. On the starship, the mer- 
cenaries are divided up into combat 
teams, and put through endless, 
and I do mean endless, simulations 
of the battles to come against the 
Yabajin, which is to say a dead- 
ening percentage of the wordage 
takes place in a kind of combat 
game reality, and consists of slam- 
bang action loops. 

Okay, admittedly, a certain 
amount of character relationships 
are elucidated through all this 
combat, and we do see the emerg- 
ence of Angelo’s combat team as a 
little society. But this long middle • 
is all too reminiscent of Orson Scott 
Card’s Ender’s Game, where much 
the same thing was used to help 
pad a tight novella out into a 
bloated novel. 

Nothing wrong so far that a 
ruthless blue pencil couldn’t have 
cured in the editing process, and 
indeed should have, since this book 
runs 514 pages, and failing to reach 
novel length was never exactly a 
problem. 

But on the starship, we meet the 
Motoki Corporation Samurai, and 
Wolverton’s conceptualization of 
the Japanese is as shallow as his 
rendering of his future Latin 
Americans is authentic. The Mo- 


ON BOOKS: ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL 


183 



toki Samurai are straight out of 
second-rate Toho productions, and 
their enemies, the Yabajin, are 
reminiscent of faceless Saturday 
morning Japanese cartoon product. 
The Motoki Corporation itself is 
just what you’d expect from this, 
the anthill zaihatsu in space, down 
to the fervent raving of the com- 
pany song by fanatic salarymen. 

It may be indelicate to suggest 
this, but this borders perilously 
close to racism. When everything 
else rings with depth and realism, 
such a cartoon version of the ster- 
eotypical Japanese, however un- 
intentionally, calls embarrassing 
attention to itself, both as a liter- 
ary failing and as a failure of em- 
pathy. If these were stereotypical 
blacks in a ghetto, there would be 
cries of outrage. If these were Frito 
Banditos, indeed if they were a car- 
toon version of the very Hispanic 
mercenaries that Wolverton ac- 
tually portrays with such sympa- 
thy and insight, Wolverton himself 
would probably be outraged. 

Indeed, perhaps Wolverton was 
aware of this on some level, for 
when they finally arrive on Baker, 
his mercenaries find themselves 
facing the Yabajin as an enemy as 
abstractly perceived as they were 
in the simulations, and fighting for 
a cartoon nightmare Japanese cor- 
porate dystopia that even they ex- 
perience as one-dimensional. 

The inevitable happens. The 
mercenaries rebel against their 
vile employers, annihilate both 
sides, and capture Baker for them- 
selves. 


Aside from the depthless Japa- 
nese culture straw man, the end- 
less action-loops in the combat 
simulator, and the somewhat ex- 
cessive repetition of same in real- 
time on Baker, this is a good, 
tough-minded, ironic, wise, and 
knowing piece of military science 
fiction that proceeds to its true con- 
clusion with the inevitability of 
true tragedy arising out of char- 
acter. 

Unfortunately, Wolverton doesn’t 
let the true ending stand. Instead, 
he allows a subplot to ripen into 
the revelation that Angelo’s am- 
bivalent and complex character 
has been a sham all along and so 
are many of the formative memo- 
ries that he’s narrated. His person- 
ality has been edited and rewritten 
by Tamara for her own ruthlessly 
pragmatic purposes. 

He’s really someone else, or rather 
a suddenly much nicer version of 
himself, able to deliver liberal ser- 
mons on peace and tolerance, and 
deserve to get the girl. 

“With a sudden revelation of the 
true nature of reality, he stopped 
being such a shit,” is even worse 
than “with a mighty effort, he leapt 
out of the pit.” 

The unreliable narrator is a le- 
gitimate and workable technique, 
and a sudden complete character 
transformation in a climactic mo- 
ment of enlightenment can be the 
perfect closure to a novel if every- 
thing else has built up to it, and 
the writer is up to rendering it con- 
vincingly. But to have your nar- 
rator wake up out of his dream in 


184 


NORMAN SPINRAD 



the denouement and tell you that 
key chunks of what made him what 
he was were illusion is, well, just 
plain silly, the perfect textbook ex- 
ample of the utterly forced happy 
ending. 

Wolverton at least brought his 
novel to a semblance of its true clo- 
sure before he mucked it up with 
this sophomoric second ending, and 
his failure was at least one of lit- 
erary insight. At least he was trying 
to give his novel a real resolution. 

Which is more than you can say 
for the great ream of five novel tril- 
ogies and episodic shared-universe 
production formats and open-ended 
drekologies that have become the 
dominant publishing mode in the 
SF genre. 

Here, a real closure is deliber- 
ately to be avoided, for the ideal is 
certainly not to leave the readers 
feeling that they have experienced 
completed perfection, but to get 
them to buy the next episode. 

True, it is possible to have your 
running characters mutate and 
even mature from episode to epi- 
sode like a soap opera, but the trou- 
ble with a soap opera is that it 
never reaches closure, it just goes 
on and on and on until it gets can- 
celed. With this kind of stuff, you 
can’t have a truly satisfying ending 
to any episode because you can’t 
have a real ending at all. Every 
ending must be a transition to the 
next episode. 

If this sounds like literary tele- 
vision, well, what the hell else do 
you think it is? Like television, it 
is ordered up by the distributors. 


produced to format by entertain- 
ment conglomerates, written for 
the most part by mercenaries, and 
designed to encourage regular con- 
sumption for as long as possible. 

No, I am not saying that the 
novel series cannot be a legitimate 
form, if indeed it is successfully 
structured in advance as a whole, 
like The Alexandria Quartet. The 
Lord of The Rings, even, arguably, 
the first three Dune books. But it 
is very difficult to do, rarely done 
successfully, and all too much of 
the SF industry product doesn’t 
even try. 

Why should it? In order for a 
novel series to really work on a lit- 
erary level, each novel in it must 
have its own satisfactory closure, 
while building at the same time to 
a mega-closure at the end of the 
last volume, and that is difficult 
indeed. Besides, who wants to even 
contemplate a final closure as long 
as the chains are still ordering 
well? Cei'tainly not publishers con- 
templating the bottom line! 

Okay, you are probably saying, 
so there’s a great wad of cynical 
persiflage out there on the racks, 
but if it isn’t even trying to succeed 
on a literary level, why bother to 
criticize it for failing to achieve it? 
Why not just ignore this crap? 

And indeed, in this column, you 
do not generally see criticism of the 
latest episode in some shared uni- 
verse series, or the middle four vol- 
umes of a best-selling trilogy, or 
the further adventures of Mung the 
Barbarian, even though this gub- 
bish has long since come to domi- 


ON BOOKS: ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL 


185 



nate what is being published under 
the logo of “SF.” 

Still, you do not have to be a 
Marxist to ultimately face the fact 
that commercial realities do warp 
literary creation, especially when 
they start bending writers of real 
literary worth away from literary 
virtue and towards the perpetra- 
tion of literary outrage, not when 
editors are abandoning their lit- 
erary responsibilities wholesale in 
the service of publishing strategies 
that serve only the bottom line, not 
when the reader is actually being 
cheated. 

So far we have been dealing with 
novels which succeed or fail, to one 
degree or another, to reach a sat- 
isfying closure for literary reasons. 
But now we must face the all-toor 
prevalent commercial cynicism 
which skews good writers away 
from even trying. And rather than 
deal with the business-as-usual 
run of the mill schlock, let us look 
at an extreme example, a genuine 
tragedy, Dan Simmons’s Hyperion, 
a novel (so-called by the publisher), 
which I came perilously close to 
throwing across the room when I 
finished it. 

Not because Simmons is a bad 
writer, but because he is one of the 
best writers to come into the field 
in the past half-decade or so, as he 
has ably proven with Kali and Car- 
rion Comfort and Phases of Grav- 
ity. Not even because Hyperion is 
a cynical piece of schlock or a dis- 
appointing failure from a writer 
from whom one has come to expect 
much better. 


Hyperion may open with a stupe- 
fying blizzard of sci-fi jargon, but 
once Simmons has shoved the con- 
text down the reader’s throat in one 
great big wad, once that admit- 
tedly necessary wad is digested, 
Hyperion becomes something in- 
teresting, indeed, even rare for SF, 
formally interesting. 

Simmons has created a complex 
interstellar culture, with the Earth 
destroyed in a nicely non-standard 
manner, replete with new reli- 
gions, three or four different modes 
of interstellar travel including te- 
leportation, space barbarians 
known as Ousters living in can cit- 
ies between the stars. Artificial In- 
telligences, und so wieter. 

And if it all seems like yard 
goods initially, once the story really 
gets going it accumulates more and 
more specificity, reality, and depth. 
Simmons achieves this unexpected 
transformation via his skillful 
choice of form, not that his choice 
of form is all that untraditional in 
literary terms. 

On the planet Hyperion, the so- 
called Time Tombs exist in a strange 
temporal anomaly, watched over 
by the Shrike, a mysterious alien, 
or artifact, or something from the 
future or the past or an alternate 
reality, that seems to murder at 
random, and around whose exist- 
ence an interstellar religion has 
accreted. 

Start with a mystery. 

Add jeopardy. On the eve of an 
impending Ouster attack, the 
Shrike starts moving beyond its 
usual territory, the time fields 


186 


NORMAN SPINRAD 



around the Tombs start acting more 
strangely than ever, and there are 
indications that the Time Tombs 
will soon open, revealing whatever 
has been lurking for eons inside. 

The Church of the Shrike, which 
controls access to the Time Tombs, 
selects seven people, for unknown 
reasons all its own, to make the 
pilgrimage across space, across the 
surface of Hyperion, to a rendez- 
vous with this moment of destiny. 

As they travel toward the Time 
Tombs, while the real-time story 
creeps slowly along in the back- 
ground, they tell their back-stories 
to each other. Surprisingly enough, 
it works. Simmons keeps the real- 
time story interesting enough on 
its own, and doesn’t so much use 
the tale-telling to fill in necessary 
background as to add layer after 
layer of resonance, depth, detail, 
and insight to the sketch of the 
background we already know. 

For of course the pilgrims have 
been chosen because they have 
past connections with Hyperion 
and the Shrike. And the varying 
means of interstellar travel and 
the profusion of' “time-debts” im- 
plied allows Simmons to give us 
characters who have known Hy- 
perion and the Shrike over centu- 
ries. One by one, they tell the 
stories, each one adding a new level 
of overlay to what Simmons is 
building up, in terms of plot com- 
plications, in terms of realities 
within realities within realities, 
turning the impending confronta- 
tion with the Shrike into a tran- 
scendent moment of destiny. 


As the real-time story moves 
closer and closer to that moment, 
the multiple meanings of that mo- 
ment exfoliate their depths, you 
realize how beautifully Simmons 
has orchestrated this form, taken 
the retrospective sequential trav- 
elers’ tales form that is at least as 
old as Chaucer, and used it to struc- 
ture an entire 482 page novel to- 
ward a single perfect moment of 
completion. 

But ... 

Oh no! He’s not really going to 
do that\ Say it ain’t so, Dan! 

But it is. He does. As you get past 
page three hundred or so, and 
weigh the wordage of the tales al- 
ready told against the thickness of 
what you have left to read, you be- 
gin to get nervous. After he’s fin- 
ished all the travelers’ tales, there’s 
not going to be enough pages left 
to do full justice to the final con- 
frontation with the Shrike. Sim- 
mons didn’t run out of gas at the 
end, did he? He’s not going to race 
through the climax in a final fa- 
tigued twenty pages or so? 

He isn’t. 

It’s much worse that that. 

When all the tales are finally 
told, the pilgrims are in sight of the 
Time-Tombs, the Ouster invasion 
has begun, and off they march to 
face the Shrike singing “Off to See 
the Wizard,” I kid you not. 

Fade to black. 

Continued next week. 

I only refrained from throwing 
the book across the room because 
the blurb copy did say that Sim- 
mons was working on a sequel, and 


ON BOOKS: ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL 


187 



I should have known the ending 
would therefore likely he some- 
thing less than fully satisfying. 
But a 482 page novel that ends 
with the deliberate antithesis of 
closure, with a cliff-hanger ending 
that’s nothing but a commercial for 
the next book, really is a bit over 
the top for commercial chutzpah, 
even in these cynical days. 

Even in a novel series, the writer 
owes the reader some kind of sat- 
isfaction at the end of each episode 
rather than using an entire novel 
to bait the sales hook for the next 
book. It may not be easy to do, it 
may seldom really succeed, it may 
entail inevitable compromise, but 
at least the writer owes the reader 
the old college try. 

Orson Scott Card, for example, 
is writing what has been billed as 
a six-volume novel series called 
‘The Tales of Alvin Maker,” though 
if the sales hold up, who knows. It’s 
hard to judge from the early novels 
in a series of such length just where 
it is all going, if it’s going any- 
where at all, but in at least the sec- 
ond novel. Red Prophet, Card has 
managed to produce something of 
internal interest that can stand on 
its own, even at the climax. 

The first novel in the series. Sev- 
enth Son, was, well, a set-up for a 
series. We meet young Alvin on the 
frontier of an alternate late eight- 
eenth century balkanized America 
where certain magics work, and we 
watch him come into his powers as 
a future man of destiny in some 
subsequent book. It sort of works 
as a bildungsroman, concluding 


with a young boy’s glimmering 
awareness of his destiny, but since 
that destiny is going to be played 
out through at least five more 
books. Seventh Son really can’t 
come to any meaningful closure. 

With book two. Red Prophet, 
however. Card gives evidence that, 
having expended the first volume 
in set-up, he may have found a way 
to turn the next five episodes into 
real novels; whether he can pull it 
off again remains to be seen, but 
at least he’s managed to do it here. 

Alvin Maker is still a young boy 
and he’s still somewhat central to 
the action, but his isn’t the real 
story of Red Prophet, and that’s 
probably why the novel succeeds on 
its own. 

Red Prophet is really the story 
of Ta-Kumsaw, Lolla-Wossiky, and 
Bill Harrison. Cetrd’s alternate post- 
Colonial America is filled with an- 
alogs of historical figures, and these 
three are, respectively, the chief we 
know as Tecumseh, his alcoholic 
mystical brother, and William 
Henry Harrison, old Tippecanoe 
himself, who, in our world, became 
President of the United States in 
large part by being the legendary 
hero of that now-notorious slaugh- 
ter of native Americans. 

The story of Red Prophet is the 
story of the battle of Tippecanoe; 
the whole novel leads up to it, and 
it provides a satisfying apotheosis 
of Card’s theme and story here. 

This is not our America, and 
Card’s vision of the conquest of the 
continent by the white man, while 
not exactly novel, is traditionally 


188 


NORMAN SPINRAD 



revisionist, with manifest destiny 
and suburbia to come as the villain, 
and the Indians as the noble vic- 
tims in mystical communion with 
the land that the soulless devel- 
opers are killing spiritually dead. 

Ta-Kumsaw becomes the mysti- 
cally anointed war chief of a united 
Indian front; Lolla-Wossiky be- 
comes a kind of transcendent red 
Gandhi, the “Red Prophet” of the 
title; and Tippecanoe becomes a 
mystical event with an entirely 
different outcome, one that changes 
the course of history toward what- 
ever is going to emerge over the 
next four books. 

Yes, young Alvin becomes in- 
volved in the struggle of Ta-Kum- 
saw and the vision quests of Lolla- 
Wossiky, and yes, inevitably the 
climax reveals him as one of the 
darlings of destiny once more, and 
yes, there are a lot of hooks to sub- 
sequent episodes buried in the 
worm, but because Card focuses on 
telling a powerful and meaningful 
story with a beginning, a middle, 
and a thematically apt end, an in- 
nocent reader can emerge from the 
novel satisfied without even know- 
ing that the book is part of a series. 

Red Prophet is a novel about the 
conflict between what is in the 
process of becoming our technolog- 
ical civilization and a way of life 
in mystical communion with the 
land, coming down foursquarely on 
the side of the greens, and letting 
them, in the person of the Ameri- 
can Indians, preserve their patri- 
mony for the ages, not via victory 


in battle, but via an act of visionary 
self-sacrifice. 

It succeeds because Card lets 
that transcendent moment bring 
the novel to a resonant and self- 
contained conclusion. Whether he 
can keep doing this in subsequent 
installments may be problemati- 
cal, but here at least he has tried, 
and succeeded, and proven that it 
can be done. 

And if it can be done, then edi- 
tors should be trying to get the au- 
thors of all those episodes in all 
those series to at least make the 
attempt, instead of discouraging 
their development as literary 
craftsmen by failing to deal with 
matters of structure and closure 
and publishing work that ends in 
mid-air. 

Okay, okay, I know that novel 
series are what the book chain buy- 
ers and the independent distribu- 
tors are convinced they must have, 
and I know all too well that their 
word is economic law. Maybe this 
is even what the mass audience for 
SF really wants. 

At any rate, it seems all too clear 
that no science fiction line is going 
to survive as a whole on the racks 
for very long without being demo- 
graphically dominated by this stuff. 
It’s a fact of publishing life with 
which even the most idealistic ed- 
itor must compromise. 

But, come on, can’t it be a com- 
promise between literature and 
commerce, between the episodic 
format and the integrity of the ep- 
isode? Can’t we at least have some 
editorial standards for this stuff? 


ON BOOKS: ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL 


189 



Can’t some semblance of the con- 
tract between writer and reader be 
upheld even here? 

When a writer interests a reader 
in a piece of fiction with an inter- 
esting beginning, and keeps the 
reader’s tension level and excite- 
ment building and building through 
a whole novel-length book, then 
the writer is surely committed 
morally to the attempt to conclude 
with a satisfying intellectual and 
emotional release at the end. In 
everything that is published within 
the covers of a book. 

To try, and to fail, is no dishonor. 
That’s what editors are supposed 
to be for, to spot the failures, do 
their best to help their writers fix 


them, and then decide whether the 
results are worthy of the lives of 
all those trees. 

Not trying to leave the reader 
emotionally and intellectually sat- 
isfied at the end of every novel, 
however, is just not doing justice, 
either to the customer, or to the 
most basic principle of the tale- 
teller’s commitment, and an editor 
who doesn’t at least try to hold his 
writers to it, let alone encourages 
them to violate it, is just not doing 
his job. 

There is a literary lesson to learn 
from even the sleaziest of hookers. 

The job doesn’t end when you’ve 
gotten them all hot and bothered. 

The job doesn’t end till you’ve 
gotten them properly off. • 


NEXT ISSUE 

Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winner Lucius Shepard returns 
to these pages next month with a big new novella, our July cover 
story, the spine-chilling “Skuli City.” Skull City is not quite Manhat- 
tan— it’s an alternate Manhattan, existing parallel to the Big Apple 
we all know and love in some mysterious dimension, on some dark 
world that is not quite our own. Like its counterpart in our world, it's 
a place full of deadly dangers and hidden traps for the unwary, 
but it is also a place of wild magic and secret mystic Powers, where 
evil sorcerers rule from sinister black towers, and strange creatures 
lurk in the shadows. When Larson, junkie, street-hustler, and sometime 
purse-snatcher, is translated to this eerie shadowland, he finds that 
he must fight for his life or be killed— or worsel Hugo-winner Mike 
Resnick is also on hand for July, and in “The Manamouki,” another 
of his hugely popular “Kirinyaga” stories, he takes us to an orbiting 
space colony that has been reshaped into the likeness of ancient 
Kenya, for another story of cultural conflict and hard choices, one 
which demonstrates that the price of acceptance is often bitter — and 
sometimes just too high. 

ALSO IN JULY: Michael Cassutt returns after a long absence with 
a passionate and powerful tale of a very curious medical phe- 
nomenon, in “At Risk”; Isaac Asimov serves up the latest George 
and Azazel story, this one a sprightly demonstration that “Wine Is 
a Mocker”; Campbell Award-winner Karen Joy Fowler returns to 
give us a bittersweet look at Einstein and the real problems of rel- 


190 


NORMAN SPINRAD 



ativity, in “Lieserl”; new writer R.V. Branham returns to question just 
how much knowiedge is really good for us, in the— dare I say 
it?— haunting “And Ghost Stories”: and new writer Nancy Sterling 
makes her lAsfm debut with the siy and funny tale of a young girl 
and her encounter with very last sort of creature you’d expect to 
find in a dusty little town in the middle of Texas, in the wry story 
of "The Recital.” Plus an array of columns and features. Look for 
our July issue on sale on your newsstands on May 29, 1990. 

COMING SOON: A major, angry new essay by Harlan Ellison, plus 
stories by Keith Roberts, Janet Kagan, Ian McDonald, Alexander 
Jablokov, Judith Mottett, Neal Barrett, Jr., Nancy Kress, Walter Jon 
Williams, and many others. 


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Pandora’s, Box AA-64, Neche, ND 58265. 

PLASTiC Modei Kits of science fiction and 
the unusuai. $1.00 for catalog. John Green, 
1821 West Jacaranda, Fullerton, CA 92633. 

PIERS ANTHONY: PORNUCOPIA - First time 
in print. Outrageous futuristic erotic fantasy. 
Hardcover $21.45 postpaid. State 21 when 
ordering. Tafford Publishing, P.O. Box 
271804, Houston, TX 77277. 

MISCELLANEOUS 

READ "How To Write a Ciassified Ad that 
Pulls.” Instructive bookiet teiis how to write 
an effective classified ad. Aiso includes a cer- 

CATALOGS & DIRECTORIES 

tificate worth $5.00 toward a classified ad in 
any of our publications. For your copy, send 
$3.25 (includes postage) to Davis Publica- 
tions, Inc., Dept. CL, 380 Lexington Ave., 
New York. NY 10017. 

ANALOG CATALOG ON COMPUTER! Com- 
plete cross-referenced index to all fiction and 
fact articles published in ANALOG between 
1960 and 1989. 13 different categories listed: 
Author. Title, Theme, Your Comments, etc. A 
must for ANALOG readers! (Requires IBM/ 
compatible & hard disk.) To order, send 
$40.00 (check/money order) to: ANALOG 
CATALOG. Davis Publications, 380 Lexington 
Avenue, New York, NY 10017. 

TAPES & CASSEHES 

OLDTIME RADIO PROGRAMS. Great Sci- 
ence Fiction! Aiso, mysteries, comedies, 
westerns. Free catalogue. Carl D. Froelich, 
Heritage Farm, New Freedom, Pennsylvania 
17349. 

YOU’LL MAKE 
MONEY 

SAVE MONEY TOO— 

BY READING and ANSWERING 
THESE CLASSIFIED ADS 


CLASSIFiED 


191 










C? ^CONVENTIONAL 
O I CALENDAR 


by Erwin S. Strauss 


There’s more to May cons nowadays than just the Memorial Day rush, 
including lots of specialized cons. Plan now for social weekends with your 
favorite SF authors, editors, artists, and fellow fans. For a longer, later list, 
an explanation of cons, and a sample of SF folksongs, send me a SASE 
(addressed, stamped #10 [business] envelope) at Box 3343, Fairfax VA 
22038. Early evening’s usually a good time to call cons (most are home 
phones; identify yourself and your reason for calling right off). When writing 
cons, enclose an SASE (again, say what you’re asking about). Look for me 
at cons behind the Filthy Pierre badge, playing a musical keyboard. 

„ May, 1990 

4-6 — Corflu. For info, write: % Elsenberg, 99 Joralemon #60, Brooklyn NY 11201. Or call (718) 624- 
0303 or 330-5161, or (212) 984-7261 (10 am to 10 pm, not collect). Con will be held in: New York City 
area (if city omitted, same as in address). Guests have not been announced. A con for fanzine fans. 


4-6 — RocKon. (501) 370-0889. Otter Creek Holiday Inn, Little Rock AR. G.A. Effinger, the Farrans. 


4-6 — PhoenixCon. Holiday Inn Powers Landing, Atlanta GA. “Literary SF" con. P. Anthony. Lindahns. 


11-13 — MlsCon, Box 9363, Missoula MT 59807. (406) 549-1435. Elizabeth Scarborough. Phil Foglio. 


11-13 — Oasis, Box 616469, Orlando FL 32861. (407) 725-2383 or 295-0228. J. Vinge. Joe Haldeman. 


11-13 — Horrorfesl. Box 277652, Riverdale IL 60627, Denver CO. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. 


11-13 — Galaxy Fair, Box 150471, Arlington TX 76015. (817) 572-5547. L. M. Bujold, Art oriented. 


18-20 — MarCon, Box 211101, Columbus OH 43221. (614) 262-7266. G. Martin, M. Snodgress. G. 
Wilson. 


18-20 — SFeraCon, Ivanicgradska 41a, Zagreb 41000, Yugoslavia. Phone (41) 57-46-23 or 21-71-22. 


25-27 — ConOuest, Box 36212, Kansas City MO 64111, M. Snodgress. D. Sweet, 0. Means. Brad Denton. 


25-27 — KeyCon, Box 3178, Winnipeg MB R3C 4E6. C.J. Cherryh, Jo Clayton, David Cherry, De Lints. 


25-27 — VCon, Box 48478, Bentaii Stn„ Vancouver BC V7X 1A2, E. Scarborough, D. Duncan, E. Lynn. 


25-28 — MediaWestCon, % Carleton, 200 E. Thomas, Lansing Ml 48906, (517) 372-0738. Media stress. 


25-28 — DIsClave, 1200 Waynewood Blvd., Alexandria VA 22308. New Carrollton MD (near Wash. DC). 


August, 1990 

23-27 — ConFiction, % Box 1252, BGS, NewYork NY 10274, Hague, Holland. WorldCon. $85 to 7/15 


30-Sept. 3 — ConOlego, Box 15771, San Diego CA 92115, North American SF Con. $75 to end of June. 


August, 1991 

29-Sep. 2 — ChiCon V, Box A3120, Chicago IL 60690. WorldCon. Clement, Powers. $75 to 7/31/90. 


August, 1992 

28-Sep. 1 — MagiCon, Box 621992, Orlando FL 32862. (407) 275-0027. The 1992 World SF Con. $65. 



















aMiti 






4077 Pub. Ed StB.SS 

ClabEd. S0.98 


HERE'S WHAT YOU 

5 BOOKS FOR S1. Send no money now. You'll be billed 
S1. plus shipping and handling, when your membership 
IS accepted. 

A GUARANTEE OF SATISFACTION. It you’re not 100% 
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you'll owe nothing. 

THE FREE CLUB MAGAZINE. You'll receive 14 issues of 
Things to Come a year. Each issue includes 2 Featured 
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SHOPPING MADE SIMPLE. To get the Featured Selec- 
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GET WHEN YOU JOIN... 

your Member Reply Form by the date shown. A ship- 
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AN EASY-TO-MEET OBLIGATION. Take up to 1 year to 
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TO: The Science Fiction 

/nrwwl^f Bookclub 

BOOK Garden City, NY 11530 

rlCzTIC/inniiiR^ YES! Please enroll me in The 

■ ■ ■ ULL/D goQlf Qiuij 

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Ibwet. The Bane of 
the Black Sword. 
Stormbringer 

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Sister Dark and White 
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